| JayWood2010 said: "But the Vita! but, but, but, but the Vita!" This guy is ridiculous |
The marketing lady should have responded
- The cost of PS-Vita + PS3 would be $600 vs. Wii U at $300.
- Connectivity between the PS-Vita and PS3 is via your Home Wireless Network, while Wii U console & Gamepad is independent
- The lag time between Console and Wii U gamepad has been proven to be less than lag time between consoles and TV screens, which in turn is far less than what you get in online multiplayer games.
- There are currently no working asymetric gameplay concepts on PS-Vita+PS3 combination. There are currently a total sum of less than 5 actual cross-play supporting games on PS-Vita + PS3 and you would have had to buy them separately in most cases.
- Cross-play is just the same game purchased on two different platforms that allow competitive or co-operative multiplayer. Really no different than when Portal 2 on PS3 allowed cross-play with Portal 2 on Steam. It's basicaly online play extended across different platforms.
- Wii U asymetric gameplay is more like split screen multiplayer except 1 (or 2) of the players can get a unique control/experience using Wii U Gamepad.
I really don't think the guy asking the questions was bad... he was uninformed asking questions, trying to get to what the differentiators are. The Nintendo rep's answer was try it for yourself, that is the only way to know what the magic is. Let's admit her answers were poor. While an experience will educate some, it wont tell the fool how it is different until he experiences PS-Vita + PS3 cross-play which as I said has yet to provide any asymetric gameplay experiences designed to be enjoyed by people in the same room.
With Wii Sports, when they wanted to have some experience the differentiator, they told them you control your player and I will control mine and we just play Tennis. That connected easily. With the Wii U, they have to tell him look I see different things on my screen... so you play what you see on big screen and I will play my portion of the game on my screen. It isn't an immediate grounded aa-ha moment. The guy clearly didn't get it when the Nintendo rep tried explaining to him. He still thinks how is this different than cross-play. I mean the messaging for Wii U is much harder thing for Nintendo to get across and so far they haven't done it for the mass of people even while gamers get it much more quickly. So Wii U will rely on house parties and word of mouth and shared play experience parties lot more than Wii did because the mass journalists like this BBC dude clearly don't get it yet.
Same room... shared play experiences. That is where Nintendo was strong with Wii, and that is what they are focusing on with Wii U asymetric gameplay offerings. Only time will tell if asymetric gameplay will be as fresh and engaging for the masses and word of mouth promotions as the waggle-motion was with the revolutionary Wii software offerings.
This is not a system to replace your tablet or PS-Vita or X360 or PS3 or 3DS. It is a system to address that relatively blue-market of families playing together, friends playing together in same room, expanding on the Wii appeal while MS/Sony still focus multiplayer largely to online. In addition to focus on having good social shared play experiences, Nintendo are also connecting gamers and their experiences over the Internet with Miiverse for single player and supporting the more traditional online options like competitive and cooperative and leaderboards and accomplishments and friend-lists and communication.
So I think Nintendo is offering a great device, supported by lots of good game proposals, and some really interesting services built in like TVii and Miiverse... but the PS-Vita is also amazing hardware/software offering. On the Vita, people really shouldn't speculate until after a Holiday season of sales just like it was a mistake to do all that doom/gloom on the 3DS prior to holiday seasonal sales. They are all toys after all.
It really is an uncertain time for video game platforms... there is a ton of platforms out now and game publishers dont' have the bandwidth to service them all so something that should be successful could ultimately still fail.
