PS Vita

[excel_excel]

Its not about 'sharing' the handheld with other people Stranglove. Its about buying games from the US store and the EU store. The Vita support in the EU PSN has not been great at all so buying from the US store as well for other games lesser games was a great option.

 

There is NO reason for this hassle to be there. Not only that, what about the people who've been using their multiple PSP accounts on their Vita? Fuck those guys right?

 

Sony shouldn't be pissing off people who use both stores on the Vita. It was an excellent option on the PSP and PS3 because the EU store would take ages for some games to arrive and some wouldn't even be released on it. All this news is going to do is deter more people from buying it till there's a price drop, and its been doing terrible as it is sales wise.

 

 

Does the PSP support multiple accounts like the PS3? I didnt know that. But Ill stick to what I said earlier. I would never buy things from more than my own account in my own region. I just wouldnt. Especially when the device I use it on makes it such a hassle. I have a UK PS3 account to download free themes and demos they get earlier. That's it.

 

And honestly, the Vita itself is not locked to an account. Just the card. People are acting like theyre severely fucked forever or that they have to get 2 Vitas(which is equally stupid). Theyre not. They gotta do the same tedious shit as before, but with 2 cards now. Sorry if I dont feel sorry for the hassle of handling their luxury item in a way that wasnt intended.

If a company doesn't flaunt something, then its probably not a "feature".

Its the same thing with game sharing. We all know what its real intention is - to have our games spread across our own systems in case we own more than one. But no. A lot of people use them to play free games on their friend's/family's account. If that goes away someday, I personally wont throw a fit because I don't game share and I don't need to be told it's wrong. I already know so. I doubt a lot of people own more than one PS3, PSP or Vita anyways.

Just the entire concept of having different stores for different regions is enough to know they dont want you to have everything from every store, otherwise....they'd have one store? Is it fucking stupid to deprive one region of things another one has? Absolutely. But if its been this long and it's never changed, well fuck it. Ill just deal with it. I personally am not going to risk shit like this happening to me.

 

Blowing up bullshit that will affect almost no one is just ridiculous, but its what the internet loves to do. I doubt this affects anyone here and I doubt this will affect anyone in the future. And the "threat" of this having any kind of negative effect on sales is stupid. Its just shit people say because they know they're already not interested in ever buying it.

And you know what? Yeah. Fuck those people. When you have to reset an entire system to switch accounts you should have taken a fucking hint instead of trying to worm your way into bullshit that wasn't normally supported. Deal with it.

 

And the sad thing is that i think all this shit is wrong. There shouldn't be region locking(or regions in general), there should be a way to have multiple accounts on the same card(Id actually would use it if there was), but there is a point where an individual needs to decide what they're going to do about it. These people decided to go against what rules were set and got bitten. Simple as that.

Im not defending this stupid move by Sony, but I have zero sympathy for the people it affected. Everyone in this is a stubborn idiot.

 

its really easy for you to say that because the US store in the Vita's case is far, far better than the EU one. If it were the other way round you would be feeling a lot different. Also, how are they 'worming your way into bullshit' when you use the different accounts? Sony had the feature on the Vita with resetting the system, removing a feature like that is a terrible practice and claiming people who were using it were trying to be 'sneaky' is complete bullshit.

 

'But if its been this long and it's never changed, well fuck it. Ill just deal with it.' But it WAS changed. People could use the accounts on the PS3 and PSP. Your telling me there wasn't a certain set of PSP users who used US and EU accounts who aren't going to be effected by this and who were thinking about buying a Vita before Sony changed this?

[Strangelove]

Maybe you don't understand me or Im not understanding you, but the problem isn't the Vita, the problem is owning more than your own region's account. That's a problem that stems way back before the Vita. I am of firm belief that Sony does not want you to have more than one account and an account outside your region. You should have known that by the time you put in that fake US address or the way your credit card doesn't work in the US store(or does it? Maybe it does).

Those are just a few little restrictions that are easily bypassed. This is just the next step. It had to end someday. That's all there is to it. Youre doing something you weren't meant to do. The rules are getting tighter and tighter. Unless the whole region thing falls apart, then its only going to get worse.

All they're doing is enforcing a stupid ass rule.

 

And like I said, I don't agree with it. At all. I don't condone it, but I understand it. The warnings were there. If people didnt react to them, thats their fault.

[excel_excel]

I get what you're saying, but there was no real warnings. US and EU account bannings are extrememly rare and this was just slipped into the latest firmware update without Sony informing anyone. That's just well, bad. Really bad. I was planning to buy a Vita eventually and use two accounts so I could have access to the bigger Vita store on the PSN US store and well as the EU store for my PS1 games, that sort of thing. This just limits things further.

[Strangelove]

Well, you can still do that. You just need 2 cards. Thats the only things that's changed.

It wasnt like on the PSP and PS3. It was already a hassle before this whole thing started.

 

I dont know if youve ever played around with a Vita, but it doesnt have an account login like the PS3. Its just not there. Every account change requires a reset of the system. You cant switch between accounts at all and games from one account wont work on the other unless you change them. Its basically like youre switching hard drives on a PS3. Except you do it back and forth...and back and forth. Its not fun. At all.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

I'm really not shocked by this. The memory card thing is just an extension of what Strangelove is talking about with having to reset the entire system to switch accounts.

[TheMightyEthan]

Honestly, the more I think about it the more having separate memory cards seems like actually LESS of a hassle than doing the resetting thing. The only real problem with it is that the memory cards are balls ass expensive.

 

@Excel: Mostly beside your point, but the US PSOne selection on the Vita store sucks balls compared to the EU one. You can still side-load the games from PS3 apparently though, so it's not really that big a deal.

[TCP]

Yeah.. and it's probably quicker to re-download the games on your PS3 (don't install them!) and transfer them to your Vita.

[Strangelove]

I dont get all this talk about the EU store sucking compared to the US store. The EU store has over 100 PSone games in the store and about a month ago got actual sales on Vita and PSP games. As far as I know, Hot Shots Golf was the only game that got discounted this summer in the US. Thats it.

[Thursday Next]

EU PS3 store is generally considered inferior. CS:GO being a prime example of that. They seem to be much better at supporting the Vita oddly.

[fuchikoma]

So... the way they implemented d-pad & button controls in the menus is pretty much exactly how I'd have done it. I'm kind of surprised how quick it is when you want to scroll across multiple icon screens. I thought it felt conspicuously crippled at first, especially not having them in the movie player, but now that they've made the effort to include it, it seems bang-on to me. Any rough spots or unsupported parts that stand out to you guys? (It's not on the lock screen, but that'd be kind of slow anyway...)

[TheMightyEthan]

Honestly, I think a better way would have been to have the d-pad just switch between screens, and still have you touch the icon you want. I think that would have made for the best usability.

[Strangelove]

The whole point is to not touch the screen though. EVER. Thats what people wanted for some ungodly reason.

[fuchikoma]

Ethan: I could see adding a page function to the right stick - it seems unused yet.

 

Strangelove: I have to admit, I'm almost in that camp. Touchscreen only loses marks for me on a handheld because it's really clunky holding it like a controller, then letting go to fiddle with the screen, then going back to the buttons. It's worse though when the most intuitive thing would just be to press X or use the d-pad, but it's unimplemented so I have to switch to the screen and pretend it's an iPhone or something. I also haven't seen a game that really benefits from it yet on Vita - I've had a lot of fun with Unit 13, but the touch controls take away from it, especially when I want to aim a bit left, but it puts the "jump over cover" button right next to the thumbstick, so aiming left without extreme caution is suicide. It also detracts a lot from Gravity Rush, IMO - I almost never "dodge" because I'm busy actually dodging, and only tap the screen to finish bosses because it's the only way. I have a stack of Vita games now plus some downloads, but the effect of touch controls is either neutral or a bit bad (like Hustle Kings, where it makes it much harder to pull off an accurate shot.)

 

Though my take on the last gen was that the PSP was an awesome hybrid of GBA form factor and PS2 graphics/sound, and the DS was home to a lot of games that could have been better without forced touch gimmicks. I know that wasn't the overall market take on it, but ideally a great system to me would have a nice screen and processors, controls about like a DualShock 2/3, and specifically no microphone, camera, motion sensor or touchscreen. (Back touch? I've only seen it make games clumsier so far, and cause gameplay hitches, but I think it has potential somewhere...)

[Strangelove]

I think Tearaway is going to make the backtouchpad legit. I really do.

Im not a big fan of touch myself, or moving shit, waggle. I hate it because 90% of the time its crappy. It takes the place of an easy button press.

Nintendo went full retard with the Wii and the DS in this respect. Every game had to add something to do with the stylus or some kind of waggle and it was annoying. At least Sony admitted failure(for the most part) with Sixaxis and didnt demand anyone use it.

That being said, I like touch menus. I love them. I think the Vita's menus work wonderfully with touch controls, as does the 3DS's, my iPhone, and the last Android phone I had. I can get behind that.

It's gameplay that gets hindered by it.

Touch and waggle needs to be complimentary or it needs to be everything. Not in the middle. There has to be a point to it. Sadly, a lot of developers don't get that.

[fuchikoma]

I think they did a fine job with touch menus too. It's too early to say which I prefer - lately I'm using the cursor just because I finally can, but for finding an icon it's as good as an iPhone or Android...

 

Mainly though, it's on-screen keyboards where I think it really shines. No more scrolling to each letter and clicking it! It's like plugging a keyboard into my PS3/360, but more convenient! For stuff like movie playback... I'm totally using buttons to pause, fast forward and rewind. It's also kinda nice that I can pop up the hold-PS menu and take the brightness down without changing grip when playing now, though I'd say it's equal (wow!) to a little less easy than touching the slider directly.

 

Microphones though... I've heard you can use it for team chat in some Vita games, and that's pretty awesome. Mainly though, if a handheld game requires me to yell, sing or blow on it, it's already failed. Sadly, that takes Tearaway off my list because it's not even portable (aside from being by MM... sorry, but LBP was a big failure for me.) It looks positively brilliant creatively, and as something to show off the system's features (and probably to a different age group,) but using LBP as a base of comparison, I think I'll stay away from it.

[TCP]

Ico and SotC are getting remote play abilities. About time this feature started getting used.

[Thursday Next]

Did they improve remote play in the last update? It seems less flaky now.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, it's a great feature that should be used more. It would be wonderful to be able to use the PS3 without monopolizing the TV.

[Strangelove]

It sucked on the PSP cus of lag and I tried it on the Vita when I got it and it seemed the same. The lag was better, but the image quality looks like the PSP's quality. Really blurry and muddy. If they could get it to look like it was natively on the Vita Id use it.

That being said, the Vita's wireless is supposed to be a lot better than the PSP's. So they could eventually get it to look and respond better.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I'm guessing at first it was just a straight port of the PSP version, but that they could work with it to optimize it for the Vita to make it work a lot better.

[Strangelove]

Would it also depend on wifi? My wifi sucks. I cant stream HD when I use Netflix. Maybe to you guys with better wifi it looks good.

[TheMightyEthan]

I haven't actually used it because I don't have any games that support it AFAIK.

[TheMightyEthan]

According to this Ico at least runs at 852x480 on Vita, but the Vita's native resolution is 960x544.

[danielpholt]

Looks like Europe is getting a PSone Classics sale. Honestly the list of games available is a little weak, but all of the Bandicoot games are on there as is Syphon Filter and Syphon Filter 3.

 

http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2012/09/04/sony-kicks-off-retro-games-sale-in-europe-tomorrow/

 

I'm a little disappointed by the number of Disney games on that list. Nothing against Disney, but i'm just not interested.

[Thursday Next]

They've had a lot of good PS One titles on sale recently. EU advertising rules say that you have to have ~6 months between sales on items. So things like MGS were excluded because they were only recently discounted.