PlayStation Vita: Difference between revisions
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With their two most recent systems falling below expectations in terms of sales, they decided to pull out all the stops with:
* Instead of using the highly custom console technology that the [[PlayStation 3]] uses, the Vita uses common smartphone technology. This makes game development easier, considering most developers are already familiar to the technology and they are able to use assets from existing hardware ranging from home consoles to smartphones. Sony later announced the PlayStation Mobile program allowing for cross-platform development between the Vita and certified Android devices; the initiative was short-lived, however.
* This is the first widely-available dual analog handheld, addressing a flaw experienced on the PSP.
* In reaction to the growing casual downloadable game market (such as iOS and Android), Vita features are similar to smartphones, such as a touch screen and motion sensor.
* The Vita is Sony's first system to use flash cards instead of optical disks for game distribution, which hopefully removes [[Loads and Loads of Loading|long loading times]] and increases battery life. Game flashcards are currently able to hold up to 16GB of information. They are [https://wololo.net/2016/08/25/playstation-vita-cartridge-dump-explained/ based off
* The price was $249 for the wi-fi only model and $299 for the model with 3G support.
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The console didn't have appreciable internal memory, it must be bought separately, in the format of a Sony Memory Stick, ''a new type'' of memory stick which so far is exclusive for the Vita; the PRO and DUO Memory Sticks used by the PSP won't work on it. This would prove to be the biggest cause for Vita's downfall, as the memory sticks were absurdly overpriced compared to commodity (Micro) SD Cards. This would prove to be a problem as games were fairly large, and the system's disc management was locked down in a (failed) attempt to prevent custom firmware with a bizarre oversight in the file management software that rendered it impossible to easily backup saves while deleting game data.
Continuing on Sony's tradition of backwards compatibility, the Vita is backwards-compatible with PSP and emulated PS1 games, albeit only through downloadable games purchased from the PSN since the Vita lacks a UMD drive. Sony later released a second revision in 2013 (model PCH-2000, colloquially known as the PS Vita Slim) which is 20% thinner and 15% lighter, dispensing the OLED panel with a cheaper LCD display and increasing the battery life. The PCH-2000 also comes with 1GB of onboard storage (though the card slot still remains; said onboard storage is actually part of the Vita's flash chip which remains the same across revisions, only repartitioned to make use of otherwise unused space), replaced the proprietary charging/data port with a micro USB port, and removed the otherwise-unused accessory port.
Sony also released a non-portable microconsole variant of the Vita called the PS Vita TV in Japan on November 14th, 2013. It was intended as a companion device that could play PS Vita and PlayStation Plus games on a TV with a DualShock controller, as well as stream PS4 games onto a different television through Wi-Fi. It too proved to be a critical and commercial failure for Sony as a good chunk of the Vita's library is blacklisted either due to the games' use of Vita-specific features or for no good reason, among them being ''Uncharted: Golden Abyss'', ''Wipeout 2048'', ''Assassin's Creed III: Liberation'', ''Lumines: Electronic Symphony'', ''Tearaway'', ''Gravity Rush'', ''Borderlands 2'', ''The Sly Collection'' and others. Hackers found ways to bypass the blacklist, though compatibility issues remain due to some games' dependency on features such as the rear touchpad; in theory developers could release updates to add support for the Vita TV, but this never materialised. Due to low hardware sales, Sony released the Vita TV as the "PlayStation TV" outside Asia, disassociating themselves from the already tainted Vita brand.
When it was released in Japan, on December 17th, 2011, it did well for a week but lost 3/4ths of its sales numbers the next, being outsold the week of Christmas not just by its main competition, the [[Nintendo 3DS]], but by the ''original PSP'' as well. And [[It Got Worse|numbers have only declined since then]]. Unfortunately, the Japanese market would prove to be the ''most'' successful by far, thanks to Japanese developers taking advantage of the lower budgets to make very original and innovative games for the system. The international release would wind up doing even worse, with the cost of the proprietary memory even more absurd (the largest of the memory options never making it to the west), while Sony of America was unwilling to support, and later outright ''hostile to'' (outright banning their release or forcing absurd censorship requirements) the [[Widget Series|oddball Japanese games]] that made of most of the system's exclusives.
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