Official PSVita launch thread.

[ViRGE]

You know what? I take back what I said about streaming assets. Apparently the transfer speed of Vita memory cards is awful.

 

[dagamer34]

Oh, has that finally been announced somewhere? I went looking for it late last week, but nothing reliable turned up.

If that's true that's a really disappointing split. I could see 128MB, but 256MB is huge amount of RAM to waste on something you're not using while you're in a game.:|

256MB is what is allocated for every app that isn't a game or the web browser, so it actually covers quite a bit. Regardless, in the future, perhaps 2-3 years from now, I fully expect a 4G version with 1GB of RAM SI that apps don't have to close.

 

[mmntech]

You know what? I take back what I said about streaming assets. Apparently the transfer speed of Vita memory cards is awful.

Yeah, the load times are unimpressive for a system that uses solid state media. Makes the price of the cards sting even more. Hopefully cheaper third party cards will be on their way.

 

[dagamer34]

I don't get it, either. The Vita should have had at least 1GB of RAM, while 2GB would have been preferred.

Cost, cost, cost. Even if it were just $10 more, that's either $10 less to Sony x millions of units, or longer period of time until a price drop (increasing the price by $10 is not an option, $259/309 are ugly price numbers)

 

[Rvenger]

I am actually thinking about going and getting one of these right now. Can anyone tell me if its a good choice or should I wait? Will my PS1 classic games work like they did on my PSP?

 

[zerocool84]

I am actually thinking about going and getting one of these right now. Can anyone tell me if its a good choice or should I wait? Will my PS1 classic games work like they did on my PSP?

I really want one but I'm waiting for the inevitable price drop by the end of the year. I see this hitting $200 by years end. Obviously this is me just guessing but I can definitely seen it happening.

 

[ViRGE]

I am actually thinking about going and getting one of these right now. Can anyone tell me if its a good choice or should I wait? Will my PS1 classic games work like they did on my PSP?

I certainly think it's worth getting. I'm having a blast with Rayman and Wipeout.

As for PS1 games, those do not currently work. It's apparently in the pipeline, but there's no ETA yet.

 

[Krakn3Dfx]

I really want one but I'm waiting for the inevitable price drop by the end of the year. I see this hitting $200 by years end. Obviously this is me just guessing but I can definitely seen it happening.

I think at best you'd be looking at a drop for the holidays to maybe $220-ish. Sony will pack in a memory card and a game before they drop the price on the core unit.

 

[Rvenger]

After all my game trades and the wheels I sold on craigslist that was taking up garage space it actually came out to ~ $50


I just need to get a better screen protector. Virge, Any recommendations in the accessories dept? I would like a case and a good screen protector that doesn't cost a ton of $.

 

[ViRGE]

I just need to get a better screen protector. Virge, Any recommendations in the accessories dept? I would like a case and a good screen protector that doesn't cost a ton of $.

I don't bother with screen protectors on my gadgets. They tend to trap oils and the extra material over the screen reduces clarity.

As for a case, unfortunately I don't have any recommendations there. I wasn't in need of a proper case; have a black velvet pouch that I keep my Vita in to keep the dust out, and when I'm traveling it's in my bag.

 

[dagamer34]

I really want one but I'm waiting for the inevitable price drop by the end of the year. I see this hitting $200 by years end. Obviously this is me just guessing but I can definitely seen it happening.

You'll see bundles that include a free 4GB memory card before there are any price drops.

 

[ViRGE]

You'll see bundles that include a free 4GB memory card before there are any price drops.

Which is silly because 4GB is too small. That's one large PSN game and then your $20 memory card is full.

 

[Aikouka]

Which is silly because 4GB is too small. That's one large PSN game and then your $20 memory card is full.

Eh, I think it's fine as long as you don't buy downloaded retail games. Some of them are less than 1GB, but others (like Uncharted) are rather large. Most of the normal PSN games like Super Stardust Delta and the Blob game are around 250mb if I remember correctly.

You'll see bundles that include a free 4GB memory card before there are any price drops.

I was in Target the other day, and they were already offering a free 4GB card if you bought a WiFi Vita.

 

[finbarqs]

60% done with uncharted... the jaggies are there, but I don't care as much.. the game play is good

 

[BenSkywalker]

Played around with a Vita for a while, was thinking about picking it up, at this point it falls under the 'not even when it is a cold day in hell' category. Load times? I think I could drive home from where I work and load a game on the PS3 faster then the Vita(maybe a slight stretch, but honestly I live pretty close to my job). I was honestly stunned at how insanely slowly it loaded everything I tried, the battery life had me on the edge, with the load times the way they are I honestly wouldn't care if it never needed to be charged. I like portable gaming for a quick fix, waiting ~5 minutes for a portable game to load is just stupid.

Did like the screen though, seems like they did a great job not punching the color too much which so many OLED makers tend to do. Graphics were certainly decent, control sticks seemed to have too much resistance for how much throw they have. The load times killed it for me though, charge a ton of money for proprietary memory cards and then make us feel like we are loading off of a disk based medium? Terrible Sony, absolutely terrible.

As for the Prime comparison, given the big lead the SGX543MP2 gives the iPad 2 in the tablet space, the Prime won't come anywhere close to a SGX543MP4.

The 543MP2 has a special PR benchmark made for it called GLBenchmark(it is a nice sort order test, that's about it). If you look at anything other then that, it is a pretty mediocre GPU.

 

[ViRGE]

Played around with a Vita for a while, was thinking about picking it up, at this point it falls under the 'not even when it is a cold day in hell' category. Load times? I think I could drive home from where I work and load a game on the PS3 faster then the Vita(maybe a slight stretch, but honestly I live pretty close to my job). I was honestly stunned at how insanely slowly it loaded everything I tried, the battery life had me on the edge, with the load times the way they are I honestly wouldn't care if it never needed to be charged. I like portable gaming for a quick fix, waiting ~5 minutes for a portable game to load is just stupid.

Did like the screen though, seems like they did a great job not punching the color too much which so many OLED makers tend to do. Graphics were certainly decent, control sticks seemed to have too much resistance for how much throw they have. The load times killed it for me though, charge a ton of money for proprietary memory cards and then make us feel like we are loading off of a disk based medium? Terrible Sony, absolutely terrible.

Out of curiosity, what games did you try? There are a few real stinkers in the launch lineup, such as Modnation Racers. Though in general it's true that transfer rates aren't very good; if you look further up, I posted a link to an article that found them to be in the 6-9MB/sec range.

As for the control sticks that's actually a unique complaint. Everyone else who doesn't like them has complained that they have too little resistance.

 

[Aikouka]

I don't find the load times to be that bad, but in some games, they can feel as long as a disc-based game.

The 543MP2 has a special PR benchmark made for it called GLBenchmark(it is a nice sort order test, that's about it). If you look at anything other then that, it is a pretty mediocre GPU.

Do you have a source for this?

 

[Rvenger]

I preordered Unit 13. Looks like an interesting 3rd person shooter.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Out of curiosity, what games did you try?

UC, Wipeout and MNR. Painfully and rather shockingly bad.

As for the control sticks that's actually a unique complaint. Everyone else who doesn't like them has complained that they have too little resistance.

For me it's a bit of a ratio at play, resistance on a stick by itself doesn't mean anything to me without taking into consideration its' amout of movement range. If it is an arcade style stick, I like more resistance then on something like the Vita by quite a bit. I fully understand that is a personal preference thing, the load times sucking, not so much

Do you have a source for this?

I could get into a very lengthy discussion about this topic but I'll keep it quick-

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5559/...mance-preview-msm8960-adreno-225-benchmarks/3

The GS2 is ~23% faster at 1280x720 then it is at 800x480. It is a PR number generator, not a benchmark to be taken seriously by any thinking person.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I preordered Unit 13. Looks like an interesting 3rd person shooter.

Have you tried the demo? I wasn't a fan after playing that.

If you tried the demo and liked it then disregard.

 

[Aikouka]

I could get into a very lengthy discussion about this topic but I'll keep it quick-

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5559/...mance-preview-msm8960-adreno-225-benchmarks/3

The GS2 is ~23% faster at 1280x720 then it is at 800x480. It is a PR number generator, not a benchmark to be taken seriously by any thinking person.

Off-screen rendering is always a really awkward thing to use, but unfortunately it's sort of a necessary evil to make things easy to compare.

Although, it makes me wonder about the way the GPUs handle renders that are not visible. If I remember right, there's something called "Z-buffer occlusion" that allows a GPU to skip rendering something that isn't visible on screen. This is something used for an object existing behind a wall or whatever. So, would something similar to this (not the exact rendering methodology of course) affect how well certain mobile GPUs perform in an off-screen test?

 

[finbarqs]

I have no qualms with the load times for uncharted (I just beat the game). In fact, I think the battery life is quite good. Like someone says, a quick fix for gaming is what this does. 1 or 2 hours here, I spanned out my gaming to 3 days of 1 full charge. During the times I played uncharted, I must've charged it once or twice... not a big deal for me. Didn't even feel the pain of inconvenience of constantly charging!

 

[blurredvision]

I have no qualms with the load times for uncharted (I just beat the game). In fact, I think the battery life is quite good. Like someone says, a quick fix for gaming is what this does. 1 or 2 hours here, I spanned out my gaming to 3 days of 1 full charge. During the times I played uncharted, I must've charged it once or twice... not a big deal for me. Didn't even feel the pain of inconvenience of constantly charging!

Same here, I've been playing Uncharted a lot this weekend. I did a full charge overnight Friday night. I'd say I put in a healthy 4+ hours throughout many play sessions over the past 2 days and only just got the low battery warning last night. The battery is extremely sufficient for me, although I keep everything turned off (3G, bluetooth....wifi stays off unless you need it).

 

[ViRGE]

UC, Wipeout and MNR. Painfully and rather shockingly bad.

Ahh, you hit the two worst games for loading, so you really did have just about the worst experience possible.:| Wipeout got better with its first patch (I'm assuming you were using a demo unit which means no patching), but it's still a fairly long time even when loading off of a game card. I'm not sure what on earth they're doing to make the load times so long, because it seems like you can load quite a lot of data in 40ish seconds. As for Uncharted it doesn't strike me as a game that takes a while to load, but I guess it's all relative.

Of course the good news is that it can't get much worse, since the Vita only has so much RAM to fill.

 

[ViRGE]

Off-screen rendering is always a really awkward thing to use, but unfortunately it's sort of a necessary evil to make things easy to compare.

Although, it makes me wonder about the way the GPUs handle renders that are not visible. If I remember right, there's something called "Z-buffer occlusion" that allows a GPU to skip rendering something that isn't visible on screen. This is something used for an object existing behind a wall or whatever. So, would something similar to this (not the exact rendering methodology of course) affect how well certain mobile GPUs perform in an off-screen test?

They should be using FBOs for off screen rendering, so you have to render everything as if it would be shown, otherwise FBOs would break entirely. As such you would basically have to outright cheat here to beat the system.