The Ps Vita looks good. The OLED screen is probably better than your home TV screen. The console is by far the most powerful and best made handheld ever. Its OS is really powerful and well optimised. The PS4 remote-play function works perfect. The browser is way better and way more optimised than the best you can find on android or ios. The application works better than high end smartphone ones. It's the most suited support for independant and small games. The playstation store is fluid and speedy... All in all, yes I think the PS Vita is a great device.
But if you think the console had no games, bad merchandising, little to no support from Sony and was just an useless device comparing to smartphone, wait. Because they're even more problems with the console.
Its backward compatible... To some extent.
Like me, you've thought that the all the psp titles would be available on the Vita. It's backward compatible, there's no reason. That would be the first time in gaming history you can't play backward games on a backward compatible console when the console is meant to run them. Then like me, you're screwed. Forget Birth by Sleep, Crisis core, N+, Tekken Dark Resurrection, all of them being some of the very best titles available on PSP. The big thing is, those games can run (and actually run) perfect if you just get illegaly access to the psp emulator and put PSP roms in the folder. That's not Sony fault, more Square Enix and Konami, but that's still the case and that sucks.
Like customise things ? Stay away from the vita.
Remember all those wonderful little tweaks you could do to the PSP illegaly ? You know like customising the OS and get rid of the xmb boring bar. Or adding a dynamic wallpaper when you were choosing your game. Or customise your games pictures. You could think that Sony did take inspiration of what made the PSP that successful to the geeky tuning guys. Get your hope in your shoes, because that is not the case. You can't even change the background music of the PS VITA... The console is closed to any customisation. I can understand that Sony does not want to open the console to hack, but it would be really easy to let us do all the cool things people could do with the PSP on the vita but natively this time. Without having to jailbreak the console I mean. But no, that's dumb, but that's just the way it is.
L and R triggers are poor, really poor.
They're floaty, and loose. They're the same as PSP1000, and I am not jocking. In other word, they look and they are cheap. Unless you hit them to the deepest, you don't really know wether you've hit them or not... And it's a shame since a PS VITA only have those two triggers. The rest of the button are of very good quality, even better than DS3, but those two triggers... Damn them.
It really has no games.
Yes, you can laugh all you want at the people saying "Vita haz no gamz", but it won't change that it's true. Actually it's utterly true to say that vita has almost none exclusives quality and great titles that could appeal to mainstream audience (I precise this, because i feel in advance the japanese anime fan coming and throwing their "best anime vita game" ever on the discussion). I can only think of Gravity Rush, Tearaway (a game every gamer should play, really a great experience) and Killzone Mercenary, wich is probably the best game designed FPS I've ever touched in my life. Soul Sacrifice and Wipeout 2048 are ok, but way overrated. They are only considered good because it's the vita and they're almost no exclusive, so each exclusive are getting soft care. But believe me, on PS3 nobody would have cared about this two games. In other words, if you have a PS3, you don't need a PS VITA.
Screen is fragile.
And by "fragile", I mean fragile. If you touch it too much you take high risk to make micro-vertical permanent scratch on it. Really, I am very careful at my device, I'm not even playing tactile games that much, and still I'm making micro scratch on it almost all the time. Of course, you can still protect your screen, but seriousely... A fragile touchscreen for a tactile device ? Pfff, no. Just no. My smartphone (and I'm speaking about a poor Xperia E) has not this kind of problem. The xperia Z is far from having this problem too, and still its screen resolution is way better than vita's. Even when my Xperia E is next to my key in my pocket while I'm running, it remain intact afterward. Of course, Sony are smart boys so they let you chose between full tactile or full layout control of the vita. Unless of course if you're playing games that need tactile to be played. Games like Killzone Mercenary, Wipeout, Tearaway... You know, games produced by Sony themselves.
This is not a PS3 "pocket version".
Don't believe the people who say it is, because it's not. It's not that bad in itself, KZ Mercenary is the best of the franchise by far, so as long as the game are good, you don't care if they're smaller or from lower technical ambition. But you have to know that if you can't bear aliasing, clipping and limited framerate on PS3 : it's worse on PSVita and even the smaller screen can't make up for it. There's already some framerate drop on PS3 flower (<3) on highspeed, but it's really bearable. But vita version's framedrop make the game look disgusting. Since the game heavy rely on its graphics, I think it's safe to say that it pretty much kill it. Yet, everyone here must know how I was hyped to shit to play a portable version of Flower. I've been waiting for it for month, it was my GTAV. But I got screwed. Same goes for a lot of ported games. Dragon's Crown suffer from massive slowdown and framedrops when they're to many characters on screen, something absent from the PS3 version. Some of you may consider this kind of minor stuff... minor. But we're just speaking about "small" games that don't really push the hardware to it's limit. You can forget something like GTAIV or V, Dirt 3, Okami HD or Skyrim running on Vita because it won't happen. I even doubt something like Journey could run well on the vita. Again, if you have a PS3, you don't need a PS VITA.
Loading time are loooooong.
Wipeout ? Long. Killzone Mercenary ? Long. Sly 4 thieves in time ? Loong. All the Fifa ? looooong. Limbo ? Oo long. Loading time are way too long on this console, and they still are after all the patch. And that's the most scary thing about it you can realise : They were longer prior to all the patches !
Only play mpeg4.
No need to explain why it sucks. You want to install some codecs ? In 2013, you would be right to think it's possible. But no, don't no the reason but you can't.
