The Therapist Gamer

PlayStation Vita

 

The PlayStation Vita was released on February 22, 2012.  It is the successor to the PlayStation Portable.  Though it brings significant upgrades to the portable gaming scene, it has struggled throughout it's life cycle to keep up with it's competitor, the Nintendo 3DS.  

 

The PlayStation Portable sold more than 80 million units (which is more than the NES) but was still greatly outsold by its direct competitor - the Nintendo DS.  One reason the PSP may have sold well is because there was an exploit with it's memory cards that allowed people to hack the console and play pirated games.  It was also possible to install emulators and thus play a variety of past consoles on the go.  In order to curb piracy, the PlayStation Vita requires the use of proprietary memory cards.  These memory cards cost much more than comparable memory cards (such as micro SD cards) and have thus been a major barrier for many people in buying a Vita.

 

The PSP had a little "joystick" that was actually more of a sliding nub.  It worked well but games with camera controls were a pain (literally) to control without a second joystick.  Accordingly, the Vita has two actual joysticks.  Combined with a variety of traditional buttons, a touch screen, and even a "touch pad" on the back of the device, the PlayStation Vita is easily the most versatile mobile device available - at least as far as controls are concerned.  

 

When it was introduced it was unofficially touted as a "PS3 in your pocket."  Even though the screen is OLED, it's actually sub-HD.  This combination makes for beautiful colors and sharp clarity, but is not nearly as taxing on the hardware as rendering full-HD images.  Accordingly, it can run games that look just about as good as PS3 games.  

 

When the Vita was announced it was heavily implied it would run large, high production-value games.  To kick things off, it launched with several of these types of games, including Uncharted (a huge PlayStation franchise).  Most likely due to the high price of producing such games and the relatively poor sales of the console, this "promise" never really came into reality.  Instead, the Vita has become a bastion of indie games and remastered re-releases of games.  Many people claim the Vita has "no games," but this can easily be refuted simply by glancing around my website.  I think people make this claim because it was hoped that huge franchises would constantly be flowing onto the Vita, and this simply hasn't happened.

 

As far as my personal experience with the Vita, I love it!  In my opinion, it's easily the best device available for mobile gaming.