Vita or 3DS?

[pokoko]

Alara317 said:
So it does skew a bit in 3DS's favor, but considering the Vita has been out a grand total of 10 months and the 3DS is coming up on more than double that, it's doing just fine. Game wise, the Vita is lagging a bit behind in exclusives, but is much better when it comes to ports and the PSN. Vita has virtual console integration, which is awesome, but the Vita has much more to chose from online. on the flipside, 3DS has better support for DS games than the Vita has for PSP games.

Both consoles have comparable libraries with no one handheld coming out the clear victor once all factors are added in (backwards compatibility, downloads, digital only games, ports, exclusives, multiplats). Naturally, it realyl comes down to what kinds of games you like better. If you don't like mario, then there's a good chance the 3DS is not for you. However, Vita still lacks that killer game seller, which mario is.

Hardware wise I give t he nod to the Vita as the much more powerful, capable machine. It has better online, better graphics, better processing speed, a much better OLED screen with better touch capabilities on both halves. However, the price reflects that.

I give my personal nod to the vita, but both systems are awesome.

Excellent post, and a very fair comparison.

The only thing I would like to add is that Metacritic is kind of crap for handheld games for both the 3DS and Vita, especially anything from Japan.  I see so many reviews where the reviewer just doesn't seem to get handheld games at all.  In that regard, I would be much more inclined to play a handheld game in the 60s than I would on a home console.  I think it behooves 3DS and Vita owners to disregard the Meta, for the most part, and find a few reviewers/websites that they trust in terms of handheld content.