wow, Piracy really killed that thing quick.....
While some people already replied, I figured I'd put my input. Bolded above..I can think of a number of things that are going to assuredly prevent the Vita from ever being a legitimate competitor to the (3)DS, and a lot of it is Sony's own fault.
Sorry, at this point I just don't see Sony ever really being a viable competitor, since even theydon't treat or care about the Vita even remotely seriously.
- Ultimately, there are STILL NO GAEMS for the Vita. It's been two, almost three years now and they've still yet to make anything that would justify the purchase. Plenty of games worth buying the Vita for. If there are none that interest you, that is your opinion. Saying that there are no games for the Vita is just wrong.
- At $300 for the handheld alone, there would have to be at least two dozen worth-it games to even pick it up at all. The Vita has been a lot cheaper. I bought mine (Limited Edition White) for $179 new with AC3:Liberations, 3 months of PS+, 4GB memory, PSABR Voucher.
- Nevermind another $100 for a mandatory memory card. 4GB memory cards have been bundled with the PSVita for free in many cases. The $100 is not necessary, the average person can easily go by with a smaller one too. Especially if they buy games retail compared to online.
- "oh, but the vita slim has 1gb already!" ... except Sony decides that storage is gone if you use a memory card, and you can't access it at all. 1GB is not that bad if you use carts compared to downloads.
- Sony still has that obnoxious and rather insulting method of basically making it so only one PSN tag can be on the same card at a time, and that you have to go through this super slow and tedious backup and restore process and format each card you're using which is absolutely, utterly stupid. Multiple account on handhelds is just so popular. I know the 3DS supports multiple accounts and.. Oh wait. It doesn't.
- Never mind the fact that I'd have to create yet another email because Sony chose to ban my original PSN account even though I never *expletive* played online in the first place
PSN banning is quite rare if you're not doing something against the TOS. PSN is used for many other things than just online play, so it's not necessary to play online if you break the TOS. (PSN is a service, thus if you don't agree to the TOS, they can prevent access)
- Even if I was affluent enough that I didn't need to pirate anything, the PSN has always had the critical flaw where there weren't even demo's available for a quarter of the available library, so because of the cost, I'm too afraid to actually try anything to see if it'd actually be worth buying. Many games have a demo available on launch and even after it. I've played quite a few games via a PSN demo before actually buying or not buying the game
- Honestly, the only reason I was even interested in the PSP at all was because of the Homebrews. I didn't even start to bother with any of its games until after I actually had one, and out of the sheer luck that my first PSP purchase ended up being a pre-mod Japanese go with a bunch of games preloaded on it already. The same can be said for many consoles. Homebrew is still an addition to what the console can be used for.
- The non-removable battery will guarantee that if by chance I do find something I do want to play constantly on it, the system will not even last a year of use before the battery's had it, and Sony gets to charge me some insane markup to replace or repair it. The PSVita battery can be changed by the user. It's also in the manual IIRC. You need just a single Phillips #00 screwdriver. If you needed to change it, there are guides out in the internet such as iFixit.
- ... Or I end up going through about eight of them because of Sony's legendarily awful hardware reliability problems. Sorry to hear that. All hardware have issues. Nothing is permanent, especially with electronics. I've still got all my Sony consoles up and running without a problem. Not saying it'll take your problem away, but not a single handheld or console made so far has been without problems. For example my DSL R/L buttons are near done, hinges always wear out, screens can get burned, etc.
I still think pretty much any phat PS3 will YLOD at some point if nothing is done. At least I had three and all of them YLOD'd (although one of them got a disc drive failure before YLODing). It is fairly dusty here but that's still kind of ridiculous.
I did after the third, haven't had any issues with the Slim (apart from odd stuttering in cutscenes that I can't remember the phat doing but oh well).
