| Kresnik said: I honestly don't think it'll ever change by this point. Whatever damage Sony has done by advertising this as "console quality on the go" (I assume that's why games on Vita get reviewed like this, because logically I'd hope people realise they're playing on a handheld) seems permanent. Vita games will get compared to their home console equivalents and no amount of pointing out time and time again that Vita isn't a home console will make any difference. |
Well, that's certainly part of it. Since the debut of PSP, Sony has raised expectations to a ridiculous degree by insisting that their handhelds are a PS2 or PS3 in your pocket. Problem is, they aren't and are really always about a generation behind.
The other thing is that when you make games like Uncharted or Resistance or Killzone or Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed that are kind of the ugly little brothers of the home console entries, most players will always be painfully aware of the disparity in quality. There's really no way around that. The more faithful the recreation in terms of gameplay (Killzone: Mercenary as opposed to Killzone: Liberation), the more your attention will be drawn to what's different. The people who play those series are particularly sensitive to bells and whistles like graphical quality and bombastic presentation, so the handheld versions just don't hold up.
I think this is what Scott Moffitt was trying to say when he was talking about the difference between Sony and Nintendo's handheld strategies, but he got it pretty wrong by positing that Sony's games are just big, overlong home console affairs that don't really work for the shorter bursts of play that he (wrongly, I'd say) thinks handheld players prefer. The real difference is that Nintendo treats its handhelds as a first priority and makes games for them that will work to flatter the hardware, and which are in turn flattered by the hardware. Whereas Sony insists that it can recreate everything you love about console games on a handheld, and that just can't really be done with most of these modern day franchises for which presentation is everything.
I mean, I don't recall many people saying that Gravity Rush or Soul Sacrifice were "good... for handheld games". They were largely received as simply good games, period.
