Where the PSP has Fallen, the Vita shall Rise

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Seven years ago when the Playstation Portable arrived on our shores it was the golden child of the video game industry. Quirky yet powerful, in theory the little guy could do no wrong and was ready to set the market ablaze. Yet fast forward to today and things don’t seem to have gone according to plan. The DSi sits out of reach, the supply of games has all but dried up and despite several attempts by Sony to save the PSP it is now face down in the water and heading for a flatline. How did it come to this? Where, on its long road of promise, did things go so wrong that even Sonys Shuhei Yoshida was last year caught admitting it was a failure? But more importantly, will the Vita succeed where it has failed? In a nutshell, probably. Let’s just start with what went wrong with the PSP, shall we? I’m getting pretty tired of hitting that question mark key anyway.

Let’s start with the core problem; the Universal Media Disc (UMD). Sony wanted to use a disc format rather than a cartridge in order to achieve a higher quality of games. This was a solid theory, but when put into practice some serious flaws began to emerge, the most basic of them being that consumers mistook the plastic casing of the UMD as extra packaging; cue seriously miffed consumer. As the name suggested, the PSP was designed for portable use; gaming on the go. But by using a disc format the PSP had longer than usual loading times, meaning by the time you got off the bus you had spent the majority of your play time looking at a loading screen wondering what the hell was taking so long.

Next was its fragility; aside the already discovered misunderstanding with the UMD itself the basic problem was a disc will scratch and cartridge will not. The flimsy protective plastic did little to help, often coming apart with regular use or at the slightest provocation from any source of pressure. Another not so great idea in practice was the sale of films on UMD format. Same price as the DVD but with half the quality. Great idea bro!

Then, of course, came the life blood of any console no matter how big or small; the games. Without them you haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell of success and, in the end, developers just stopped caring. Not all of them, of course, since for some reason Hideo Kojima decided the PSP Go was the place to be for his last project, we’re of course talking about Peace Walker. The PSP found itself in a difficult position because its biggest selling point was the lure of being able to play full scale top of the line games on the go. But when they did release said games, usually a Syphon Filter or a God of War, the consumers would have preferred to play them at home on their TVs, and with a second analogue. Contorting and stuffing a full game onto a such a restricted set of controls only meant that every successful PSP game just would have made more sense on the home console. This leads to the most damning of all questions; what the hell was the point?

So apart from wasting the potential of its best games, what else did the PSP do wrong? How about something we already touched on, the single analogue. I don’t want to sound harsh but whatever muppet thought this was a good idea needs to be hung by their left thumb with barbed wire and left to swing, so they know the pain and discomfort they have inflicted on the world. It has to be one of the most horrible gaming interfaces ever conceived, ever! I’m running over a bit here so I’ll just sum this flaw up with the following: What the hell were they thinking? Enough said.

So while the PSP might have enjoyed it small success with games such as Birth by Sleep, Chains of Olympus, Peace Walker and Monster Hunter Freedom, the project as a whole was a failure. However, it did serve as a very promising experiment for Sony and their next crack at the handheld market, the Vita.

From the word “go” the Vita already addresses the first of our problems; replacing the UMDs with flash memory cards which are both more durable and capable of offering all the benefits of the UMD with none of its drawbacks. If that didn’t fix the problem, we’re also in 2012, digital distribution is all the rage these days. These small cards are the answer to our prayers, offering a smaller and more compact media format that will never mistakenly be torn apart on the first day…it happened, just make your peace and come to terms with it.

Now to answer another problem; development interest is also at a high and, much like with the PSP, the Vita is attracting the attention of a lot of third party developers. Marry this to the usual suspects from first and second party developers, along with the predictable additions such as the likes of an untitled Metal Gear project, and you can see where this is going. Now if you are look across the board to the closest competitor, the Nintendo 3DS, you will notice the same games you played before but with a 3D moniker attached to the title. Very interesting. While there may be some big names on the card for later this year, the problem is that the 3DS only has limited appeal and not everyone will particularly enjoy 3D, as it can be an eyesore. Even its newest big title, Metal Gear Solid 3DS, is available in higher resolution on consoles as part of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection. So as it looks now, the Vita will have no shortage of games in the coming months but whether this will continue we will have to wait and see.

Then there is the awesome inclusion of a second analogue. In addition to the touch screen controls, a second analogue helps to bridge the gap between console and handheld even more and will allow for much, much better controls when trying to enjoy your favourite games. Too many times was a game ruined because the PSP ran out of buttons! Well, now developers won’t be forced to contort the controls around a limited set of functions, and this will open the door to many new and exciting games. Or maybe even just a few very well loved familiar ones. There were rumours of a portable Bethesda title once upon a time. Hey, a guy can dream can he not?

So apart from everything that has been improved, what is actually new that will improve the actual gaming? Well for starters the Vita comes with an OLED touch screen, two cameras, a touch pad, backwards compatibility, Wi-Fi with optional 3G support, and a 4-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor with a 4-core SGX543MP4+ graphics processing unit! I’m sure that last bit probably sounded impressive to all you techno wise kids who are down with this jargon.

So although the Vita is stepping into a market already saturated by the likes of ANDROID and tablet computers, it is already far more superior adversary than its predecessor. According to Sony it has reached 1.2 million in sales worldwide and it has, roughly, thirty titles available already both in store and online with another seventy supposedly on their way this year. With the price set to drop at least once this year, as products so often do, it’s looking so far so good for the Vita as it gradually picks up pace in what is expected to be a long and troubled race. Will it succeed where PSP had failed? You know what, I think it will.