PS Vita a ‘Legacy’ platform: Why do people act surprised?
Yesterday, Sony Computer Entertainment’s CEO Andrew House dropped a bombshell in the gaming world by calling the PS Vita a “Legacy system”. (Sony later backpedaled on that statement, stating it referred specifically to the older Vita 1000 model)
This apparently was news worthy, to a point that it showed up in pretty much every rss feed in my “gaming news” subsection.
I can’t remember the last time I saw the Vita on the frontpage of gaming news… and that might be the problem, don’t you think? I’m baffled that mainstream media and gamers all over the world act so surprised that Sony considers the Vita a second class citizen. The writing was on the wall for a while, and the signs were already obvious a year ago, when I wrote an article entitled “In 2014, is the PS Vita nothing more than a PS4’s second screen?“. Wow, I’m such a visionary, apparently a year ago I predicted something that yesterday shocked the entire gaming industry…
Andrew House’s comment came from a statement he made to investors in a strategy presentation yesterday. Specifically, he said: “we took a write off against some components for our legacy platforms”, where his slides stated “Write-off of Playstation Vita and Playstation TV Components”
Gaming news websites jumped the gun on that statement, but Sony later tried to to damage control, stating:
What Andy mentioned as ‘legacy platform’ was part of the write-off for PS Vita components for the first generation of the PS Vita, which is no longer available in the market, and he did not directly mean the current PS Vita and PS TV models, which are available in the market. Our portable business will be continued, and many users are now enjoying PlayStation 4 remote play features as well as original PS Vita game titles on PS Vita and PS TV.
Of course, there’s more to it than just this statement. If you listen to the full meeting, you will see that SCE is focusing 100% of their resources on the PS4 moving forward, which is another way of confirming the Vita is dead in their eyes. More generally, nothing was really said about Sony’s mobile business in the presentation. And for gaming journalists who think this is a surprise, they should ask themselves when was the last time they were excited about a Vita release.
Nevertheless, the presentation is extremely interesting and worth listening to in its entirety. It paints a very positive picture of Playstation’s business overall. What was interesting to me is the 4 axes on which Sony plans to invest resources and money moving forward: Their network architecture, Playstation Vue, Playstation Original contents (based on the success of their original series Powers), and project Morpheus.
As for the PS Vita, it will probably become the hacking scene’s responsibility to turn it into something bigger. And this could happen sooner than later.
This is all the more reason for a fully functional CFW to hit the Vita. After the PSP got one console sales skyrocketed. If Sony doesn’t even care about it anymore it’s a dead console so no more need to use the “but it will kill the console” excuse
The comment about “not caring” is more referring to that they wont invest much more money into it themself, as of making new games. The Vita sees many releases in Japan from 3rd parties. Sony hasnt completely abandoned the Vita overall.
I also dont think that there are tons of people who is waiting to buy a Vita mainly so they can run homebrew on it, neither regarding piracy either. Its not like the 3DS sales exploded once homebrew and piracy became available on it.
Piracy wasn’t on the possible on the 3DS for quite a while unless you were running firmware below 5.0 which the majority of 3DS users had their 3DS firmware updated at 5.0 or above. Also the 3DS isn’t like the PSP where you can do a firmware downgrade, it was only last year with the release of Sky3DS that consumers can now play pirated 3DS games on the latest firmware. So consumers for quite a while had to put up with the expensive cost of the 3DS. Despite the 3DS “selling well” Nintendo was often complaining about missing sales expectations mainly because Nintendo refused to lower prices for their system and games. Looking back the 3DS hardware was really bad, they had to release a “revision” (more like a half-a-gen upgrade) to increase sales and vastly improve on the original faulty hardware.
First
fail
So close, but close only counts in hand grenades
,and carpet bombing.
try agine
Try a dictionary
Well I really don’t see the Vita 3000 around the corner. And what is legacy device about the PSTV? There isn’t anything for it in terms of accessories. Drop the price and give up Sony.
Just installed Dev Menu on my 3.18 vita..
my psvita and my body is ready..
Also, is unity required to be installed? Will it work on a 3.18 Vita?
I meant PSM Dev, d*mn I’m mixing 3DS with Vita. 😀
You don’t need to install dev menu on Vita 😉 It’s already there. All you need to do is enable it…
He is talking about Dev assistant and you have to activate it is not just automatic to use.
uhm what? dev menu already there, and how to activate it then ?
You have to download dev assistant through web browser it will redirect you to the APP on PS Store.
Why people can’t read simple step by step instructions? …
It clearly states “legacy PLATFORM”..can’t go with an excuse like that with psvita 1000..as a platform in general
Shame on $ony the PSP is a Legacy Platform
The vita is not even close to being legendary. It has so much limitation its sickening. Legostar Wars II had more enemies on the screen compared to these other Lego games for vita.
I fully support Ricky in this response!!
See even sony KNOWS that they don’t want the vita, but they should at least let us do what we want with the system and they can control the “Remote Play” side of it and unlock the rest for us to save ALL a headache BUT i guess sometimes if you don’t make people work for what they have got it won’t be appreciated. Altho it really would be nice of sony just to give us FULL access and the SDK to go with it LOL, But then again it would be GREAT if they just gave everyone a MILLION dollars and say good luck.. Just my thoughts
sony is to blame. They have not secured good games for vita. I prefer games on handheld so that i can play anywhere, literally
It is such a shame that sony is focusing more on remastered for ps4, heck type 0 on ps4 and not on vita? Ppfftt…
Then blame yourself LOL
and you too, apparently. LOL
holy ***! me too! LOL
I just blame you 3. 😛
If that potential native exploit, or even a usermode exploit comes out, I’ll probably never update again. Last game I bought and enjoyed was Soul Sacrifice. Been a steep down hill since then. Vita has more potential enjoyment as a homebrew/emulator machine than a console.
It seems that I have placed too much hope in the vita. Not only do I have an original model, it is also the 3G model. I was willing to see it progress, but now I find myself rooting for hackers to make use of it.
I have a 1st gen 3G model too, never saw it go anywhere. Once they removed all the Google services, I basically took that as confirmation that having 3G meant absolutely nothing.
So this means they are tired of Firmware update.Now is the time to ressurect the Vita through hacked firmwares.
That’s what happens if the unit is UN-HACKABLE…
The more protected a console is, the less it is favorable to the mass..
Come on people. See how the original psone, ps2 and psp skyrocketed in its existence.. even until now, i see more people with psp than ps-vita.. 😀
And like it or not, piracy is the only way… to revive the console. 😉
if you flip the Sony logo upside down and cut it in half it’ll say Anu$
Nope, the “S” becomes kind of a backwards “c”
Platform != model
It’s over, Vita is (all but officially) finished (in the West). Is seems to be doing okay on the domestic market though, so weebs (myself included) can still hope for scraps off of Japanese table aka localizations.
Hey, guys, I’m back
Certainly more vita will be sold as it’s hacked….Probably will help a little, but, as 3DS hacked, too…..so so so so so so so so so
PSVita =Nothing for profit
But, as a one has a bunch of download games, I probably buy a second vita to have fun with hacking and homebrews….
Even with these systems hacked they eventually get boring to play lol.
In Japan at least Vita seems worth buying, there are more worthy games than other regions
ugh….
Sony killed the vita 2 years ago, time to let the real fun begin
(This vita)
(She’s been dead)
(For years now)
(For years now)
(So death is)
(Not something)
(that scares me)
I’m just extremely dissapointed at Sony because of all the effort that they take to block the ePSP exploits but little to no effort to support the vita propperly, because being honest here, if you really want to pirate PSP games you can pick up a cheap PSP and hack it in less than 5 minutes.
I can’t understand why, support it or drop it… But Sony doesn’t seem to be able to take a fkn decision!
Well homebrew made the PSP popular. The anti-piracy polices combined with the price of the proprietary memory cards is what really turns consumers off in the west. It’s not the lack of games or lack of advertisement as some people believe. I think millions of people were disappointed that there is no native hack yet. I don’t advocate piracy, but had Sony just used regular SD cards it would be selling a lot better.
The irony here is that if hackers were able to fully exploit the system and sales jump up, what does that say?
Vita was dead for quite a while now. Only blind couldn’t see it coming with Sony cutting youtube and generally not caring about vita at all. Major publishers tend to not care about releasing anything on it too, soo… I guess, full hack of Vita which will allow piracy is the only thing that will boost sales and this is sad.
It’s not dead in Japan ..
PSVexPl
prepare psp and vita eboots pboots as vita pkgs.
Now includes package installer formula.
Front Page : ” Sony makes deal with Wololo to release software designed to empty warehouses of cooperate product sewn into litigations of tax fraud” — j/k
psvita model PCH- 3001?
To be honest, I’m quite hyped for Persona 4:DAN, the monster girls game and the SaGa games (hopefully they show something about it on E3 and don’t switch development for a PS4 game)
I think that if Sony were a bit smarter and less ambitious , should of ” unconsciously ” release / leak some exploit. Psvita would increase sales because there would be more people interested in buying the console, even keeping updates, psn store , plus shopping and all those little *** with making money … but allowing homebrew and other things . (I apologize for my bad English , I’m from Chile)
I did not pick up a PS Vita until March 2015. I had been actively tracking the PSV scene since 2012 or so, and the needs of life prohibited me from jumping in any sooner.
Immediately, after buying the Borderlands 2 bundle, I had to hunt multiple stores just to get what you would consider standard accessories and a few physical copies of games. Walmart had just sold off their 15 titles for $14-$20 each. All that was left was a Sony-branded carrying case. Best Buy has had the same 8 titles for several months. The clerk at a local Target electronics department wasn’t even familiar with the Vita – “Oh, Sony had some kind of handheld here for a while, but the parent company returned the stock”.
My PSV gaming has been evenly split between Gravity Rush and SF x Tekken. I’m still amazed at the potential of the hardware. Bought a PS Plus account and registered the unit for PS Dev. I’m really hoping that some console hacking will lead to a vibrant homebrew and emulation scene. This is likely the last gasp.
And, as Sony so graciously did with their Xperia Android handsets, perhaps they will port the needed tools for community use. Doubtful, but always possible.
I can’t code to save my life, so hopefully I can send some jingle to the right folks in supporting PSV hardware development efforts.
Until then, all hail Wololo and the user community. You folks rock!
Sony jus need a larger games library. Cheaper memory card. Sony 3gen vita should come with a 3d camera 12 megapixels a good front side camera. and a lot of hardware that the Sony android phones has. Should have enough hardware to run a full windows 10 os and play games all day.
as long as the 3rd party support keep the games coming like before i couldn´t care less.. danganronpa ultra despair girls, corpse party blood drive, kiseki, dungeon travelers, lost dimension, all those sweet vn´s etc. etc. .. with the upcoming games this year alone i´ve got things to play for a loooong a time. i´m a little bit excited about hacking possibilities, but i´m also afraight that piracy could change the status quo :/ emulation is still neat though
Well, to be honest, the only purpose i bought a PSP Vita a month ago was for a Seccond screen for my PS4 so i lay in bed and play those games while i’m in bed so, yeah i can clearly confirm that Vita is dead for Game Developers and Sony Itself.
and i truely don’t care for Vita’s Exploit and Piracy but i would be happy to import some of it’s good games into it’s own memory which i bought it for nearly $100 (32GB) as soon as piracy is break.
And other matter:
i updated to 3.51 FW while i was at 3.18 and i saw that my Google Maps App has been removed from this device, what the heck happened with Google Maps on Vita ?, i don’t know.
PS:
i don’t know if it’s technically possible to do such thing but, i’m just sayin it.
because i don’t want to keep switching those Damn Nintendo fashioned Cartridges into that console’s butt and eject them so, i love u hackers if ur community do the favor
I love my Vita. I hate my PSP.
And forget about there will be a good Vita hacking scene. Will never happen. Enjoy and buy all great games on Vita instead.
The 3ds has a great hacking scene nowadays. Buy a 3ds if you want full freedom of your console.
PS Vita it’s a shame for Sony.
It’s sad that for example EA don’t release FIFA 16 for PSV for low sales.. Of course they have low sales, cause EA laughs on PSV users, every f*cking year sold a “legacy edition”, for that reason alot of users didn’t bought FIFA 15. If EA would pay attention and decided to release a decent version, the things would be different. Sony is guilty for PSV dead, they NEVER give a truly support.
This console is being wasted, it’s a powerful console, I refuse to take it for dead .. but clearly it is from the beginning.
This is rather exciting. Its status as a legacy platform would imply lesser, if any, investment into firmware updates and general restriction of hacking from Sony.
Surely this would be the best time to work on a native exploit? Nobody’s going to break down your door for aiding the cause of piracy, as it’s no longer econmically feasible to do so. The decrease in the release in new software will lead to far more discontent users and a sense of redundancy of the device in its current state, contributing to a greater willingness to void warranties and modify the device.
Somebody really ought to start a donation campaign to fund the development of exploits and of useful unlicensed software to expand the library of titles available.
It makes sense to do so for this particular device given the success of its predeccesor and it being based on the ARM architecture as opposed to MIPS like devices competeing in the realm of portable emulation. Being ARM based should be advantageous given there ought to be far more people nowadays inversed in ARM assembly than MIPS. Motivation to learn ARM assembly should also be greater than that of MIPS, given the future being seemingly dominated by the platform and therefore increasing the employability of those who are educated in it.
The device should at least handle up to dreamcast emulation. Porting GPLd engines like ioQuake and the likes would also be quite nice.
It’s too bad I have neither money nor (applicable) programming knowledge.
But regardless:
Native Exploit Donation Campaign When?