Playstation Vita thread

[grizzly]

my god tearaway is looking beautiful

[therealjaxon]

Killzone: Mercenary gets dated

Sony’s has confirmed a release date for anticipated PlayStation Vita shooter Killzone: Mercenary.

The game will be released on September 18th.

Sony has marked the announcement by releasing a brand new multiplayer trailer, which can be seen below:
http://youtu.be/VOV_rVrnezE

[Shadowman]

Anyone looking for a decent digital title to pick up could do a lot worse than picking up Escape Vektor. I've been playing it non stop after getting it a week ago and have finally cleared all 150 levels and got all the trophies (levelling up to level 25 was a pain!). Its a maze/pacman style game except with you are in a giant computer. It starts off fairly easy and slow but as you quickly unlock more powerups the pace and difficulty ramp up as well.
My only complaint is that sometimes the controls seem a tad unresponsive in a couple of ways... accidently going the wrong way in a map and dying is incredibly annoying as is the boostinator not working when I'm clearly holding the button down (and this happened quite a lot by the end which pissed me off a great deal ). Still for £7 I thought it was well worth it, plenty of content and insanely fun and addictive to boot!

Also, Dokuro is now on the Euro PSN store. If you've not imported the game already its a must by. Its a clever 2D platforming/puzzle game that is among the best the Vita has to offer. I think its priced around £11 and is a bargain at that price.

[retro74]

Started Need for Speed Most Wanted at the weekend. Gosh it's very good, best handheld racing game ever probably

[Blakey]

Tearaway and Killzone:Mercenary are now firmly on my pre-order list.

I may pick up NFS:Most Wanted at some point, but I'm still unsure as to whether I'll like it or just get bored within 30 minutes...

[therealjaxon]

Sony celebrating PlayStation Vita birthday with digital software sale

The PlayStation Vita is one year old in the UK. Hoorah!

And to celebrate, Sony has announced a two-week price promotion that will see significant discounts of Vita software on the PlayStation Network.

Highlights include Lumines, Rayman Origins and Dungeon Hunter: Alliance for £13.99 as well as MLB 12 The Show for £11.99.

The vast majority of the games also offer an additional ten per cent discount on top of the sale price for PS Plus members.

Here’s the list:

A-men – £7.99 -> £5.99
Army Corps of Hell – £34.99 -> £15.99
Asphalt Injection – £19.99 -> £9.99
Blazblue Continuum Shift Extend – £19.99 -> £14.99
Dungeon Hunter: Alliance – £29.99 -> £13.99
Escape Plan – £9.99 -> £5.19
Everybody's Golf – £11.99 -> £6.99
F1 2011 – £31.99 -> £15.99
Hustle Kings – £6.49 -> £3.19
Little Deviants – £11.99 -> £6.99
Lumines: Electronic Symphony – £29.99 -> £13.99,
Michael Jackson The Experience HD - £19.99 -> £9.99
MLB 12 The Show – £23.99 -> £11.99
ModNation Racers: Road Trip – £11.99 -> £6.99
MotorStorm RC – £4.79 -> £2.39
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale – £29.99 -> £14.99
Reality Fighters – £11.99 -> £6.99
Rayman Origins – £29.99 -> £13.99
Ridge Racer - Ultimate Edition – £19.99 -> £9.99,
Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen – £34.99 -> £15.99
Street Fighter x Tekken Vita – £39.99 -> £24.99,
Super Stardust Delta + Advanced Star Fighter Pack Bundle – £7.99 -> £3.99
Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack – £5.49 -> £2.79
Top Darts – £6.49 -> £3.19
Touch My Katamari – £24.99 -> £15.99
Unit 13 – £29.99 -> £14.99

[Shadowman]

Ranarok Odyssey Demo now up on the Euro PSN. I've played the missions a few times and it seems like a fun Monster Hunter hack and slash style game. Unfortunately its a digital only title in the UK (but being released later this month for £25 so that's something I guess), I'm more concerned that between this and Sly 4 that I won't have any space left on my 32gb memory card! Sony needs to release larger memory storage (but for a sensible price please) as I've been picking up an awful lot of digital content on the system, way more than I originally expected when I got the system a year ago.

[therealjaxon]

Sony: We must ask third parties to make more attractive Vita games

Third parties, as well as Sony itself, must take responsibility for elevating the PlayStation Vita out of its current rut.

That’s the opinion of Sony’s CFO, executive VP and corporate executive officer Masaru Kato, who told investors (as reported by Seeking Alpha): “One thing clear for us that in terms of profitability – we have to do a better job in promoting the PlayStation Vita mobile product.

“How do we do that? Well, gaming business software is the name of the game. So as a fundamental measure, we are putting a lot of resources, not just first party, but also asking third parties to put out more attractive software. That's the basics.”

Kato remained coy on the notion of a price cut for the device, however, saying that while price will always be considered improving profitability in the mobile and handheld space is of paramount importance.

Added Kato: “The other things – marketing, pricing of the product etc, I cannot talk about pricing of this platform. But those are the things that we are looking into to improve our profitability in the mobile handheld gaming business.”

[therealjaxon]

Sony announces Japanese Vita price cut

The price of the PlayStation Vita has been cut by around £35 in Japan.

The machine had until now cost ¥24,980 (£174) but will now retail for ¥19,980 (£139), according to Eurogamer. The cut applies to both the Wi-Fi and 3G models.

Crucially this new price still means that Vita is more expensive than 3DS, a machine that regularly sells in vastly more excessive numbers.

Eyes will now turn to the West where the handheld is in desperate need of a boost to get it back on track.

Most retailer charge between £200-£250 for the device, although cheaper prices can obviosuly be found for pre-owned models.

Arguably, though, Vita’ biggest obstacle remains its software pricing. While Sony has embarked on a umber of digital software sales for the device launch RRP for new software can still reach over £40.

[Shadowman]

Problem is, memory cards are still comparatively expensive and as you need one of those to basically use the thing they should have cut the prices of the cards at the same time. Speaking of which I really wish they'd also come up with some bigger memory cards, my 32gig one is almost full and I'd rather not start deleting stuff unless I absolutely have to...

[therealjaxon]

The prices of the cards are silly but always have been since the PSP.

[Shadowman]

The prices of the cards are silly but always have been since the PSP.

True but now with digital games becoming more of the norm and there are quite a few great digital games to pickup for the Vita they really should make them more affordable in my opinion.

[One-armed dwarf]

You can buy 32GB of storage for the PSP for no more than 20-30 euro so long as you know where to look. That's what I did and I turned my PSP into a portable PS1. Vita storage is absurdly overpriced though.

[Shadowman]

Sly Cooper 4 demo now up on the Vita store. I gave it a quick whirl and its pretty much exactly identical to the PS3 version bar a couple of changes
- the cel shading effect is gone, the graphics lose some of their style because of this. The game doesn't look bad but it does hammer home how the game does look like a slightly higher res PS2 game...
- Load times are longer. They didn't seem really bad, well at least compared to Modnation Racers...
- Frame Rate seems capped at 30FPS as opposed to the 60FPS of the PS3 version. It doesn't really effect the game though from the sections I played.

[Maryokutai]

Hm, too bad they dropped the cel-shaded visuals, but I’m still more interested in the Vita version than the PS3 version. If my memory card was bigger than 8GB, I’d just buy the cross-buy bundle, but as it stands I’ll have to pick up the dedicated Vita version.