PlayStation Vita: A waiting game or squandered opportunity?

Upon its announcement at E3 2011 the PlayStation Vita seemed to have everything going for it; improved and expanded controls, graphics that could potentially match the PS3 and an extensive list of third party companies all lining up to develop for the system. It has even claimed several awards from major publications including best gadget of the year by T3. Now almost a year on from its initial release in Japan, the Vita is nowhere near the success it planned to reach. Why is this? The answer is down to several factors.

Of course the main reason why the Vita simply has not sold is the games; of all the releases the system has had since its launch only Persona 4: Golden, LittleBigPlanet Vita and Sound Shapes could be deemed triple A games that are exclusive to the system (according to Metacritic, everyone will have their own favourites of course) and these belong to genres that won’t appeal to every type of gamer, particularly the hard-core players who prefer shooters and other more adult games. Not that the Vita hasn’t endeavoured to satisfy this crowd; there was a fairly large amount of anticipation for both Call of Duty Black Ops Declassified and Assassins Creed Liberation. Both games attempted and failed to differing extents to appease the Vita. This may have been partly down to the pressure placed on the developers to put the finished product on store shelves to coincide with the release of its console brethren. As a result, cuts had to be made to the game’s design in order to meet the objective set by the publisher. This proved to have a knock-on effect, more so for Black Ops Declassified as developer Nihilistic may have been forced to throw out both a zombie’s mode and any form of story that could have added to Treyarch’s version of Call of Duty, resulting in perhaps the most barebones experience on Vita. Assassins Creed Liberation fared better on the review front but still fell short of its console counterpart; a slimmed down multiplayer and several gripes with story and technical performance ,meant that Liberation was not only less engaging but also had a reduced amount of content to offer. Essentially, to have these games being pushed as big releases by Sony, only to have them fail to deliver degraded many opinions on the system which only amplifies the general perception among a large part of the gaming community that the Vita is simply not worth buying if it has no big names to ride on.

The second major reason that the Vita is failing is competition, not only from other gaming hardware but the huge popularity of mobile devices such as IOS and Android. Many general consumers may ask themselves these days ‘’why should I buy a powerful gaming handheld with little games to offer when I can have an IPhone or Android that does much more than just gaming?’’. The Vita does have several features that keep in in line with modern smartphones including apps for Skype, Facebook and YouTube but Vita owners have no access to any form of App Store or Android Market, digital stores that contain hundreds upon hundreds more simple games and apps that can expand what the system can do. The Vita has both a camera and 3G connectivity but these have both been made obsolete since the system’s launch since the newer iterations of the IPhone among other smartphones have incorporated updates to several features including a better quality camera and soon the upgrade to 4G networks, making them faster and more efficient than the Vita. This places the Vita’s competitors a step above which makes consumers more inclined to purchase these rather than Sony’s system.

Finally Sony seems to have made some decisions that didn’t fare well with the community in both the production and sale of the Vita. The first of these was the partnership with AT&T; a laughable decision to many who attended Sony’s press conference, considering that many mobile users in the US prefer Verizon as their signal provider. It seemed to be the lowest point of Sony’s E3 2011 showing but thanks to the undeniable potential Sony put across for the Vita, this was easy to overlook. The truly baffling choices came with the announcement of pricing; particularly for the memory cards that are a must for any game saves. The larger scale memory cards from 16GB are still all over £30 to buy in the UK, a huge amount compared with the smartphones and 3DS’s built in storage and the SD cards used in full-blown digital cameras. This places a huge restriction on consumers who purchase the Vita as it practically forces them to pay out more money to be able to access all their favourite entertainment in addition to paying out full price for the system to begin with.

Perhaps these drawbacks are mere bumps on the road to the system’s eventual greatness? Maybe we only need the prolonged patience to wait for the Vita’s killer app to finally do the system justice? It could be argued this was also the case with the Playstation 3; after almost two years of disappointments (One and a half in Europe) 2008 finally saw the release of ‘’Metal Gear Solid 4’’, ‘’LittleBigPlanet’’ and ‘’Resistance 2’’, three major exclusives that provided a huge boost to the system’s sales which was then matched by a constant stream of brilliant games in the years that followed including the legendary Uncharted 2 among many others. Or what if similar the PS3, the system is a challenge to develop for and so developers are currently taking experience on board to produce better quality games for the system. Either way Sony has been known to take it’s time in its long history in the industry and they are sure to announce more big titles for the Vita, possibly including a Bioshock title among other rumours.

Above all else the Vita still has a chance to succeed in spite of all the disappointments but only if developers are able to put the time, effort and money into making the system seller the Vita so desperately needs. What do you all think? Will the system rise from its lack of brilliant exclusives and become the definitive handheld gaming console? Or will Sony be forced to pull the plug on the system for all its shortcomings?