It’s been a year since the PlayStation Vita’s release, give or take a few weeks. Those of us who bought into Sony’s smart little lump of tech right at the start of its life have endured a mixed year. Some great gaming experiences, at both extremes of the hardcore/casual spectrum, have not translated to system sales as much as Sony will have hoped.
Speaking as a customer, it’s difficult to shake a persistent feeling that the console isn’t quite being pushed to its full potential. Throughout a year when the Nintendo 3DS has convincingly outperformed Sony’s machine, it has seemed like – on some level – a repeat of the PSP vs DS era when Sony’s device had all of the potential and very little of the long-term, widespread success.
[drop]Of course, the PSP is hardly a sales flop but it never felt to me that it lived up to its full potential as a console that could do everything I wanted – from short-burst mobile-style gaming to more fleshed out, full console experiences. I thought the Vita would finally achieve that goal and, in a limited way, it has begun to.Games on the Vita like Gravity Rush, Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation have shown that there’s plenty of potential for large-scale experiences that are genuinely top quality, even if we haven’t quite reached it yet.
PlayStation Mobile has shown that smaller, cheaper app-style games can be incredibly compelling on this hardware but the platform seems to lack a coherent marketing message from Sony itself and with the wild (and cheap) proliferation of smartphones, PlayStation Mobile isn’t enough to sell an expensive system by itself – it needs the heavy hitters (and a significant price cut, please). If Vita owners aren’t already concerned by the lack of a proper Q4 blockbuster to sell systems and a roadmap of top quality releases for the next year, perhaps they should be.
If sales of the Vita don’t pick up significantly, and soon, third party publishers will not be so keen to spend the millions it takes to bring a large-scale game to market and that cycle will perpetuate itself. Sony will continue to invest for a few years but without the enthusiastic support of publishers like Activision, EA and Ubisoft, the Vita will never be all that it could.
This morning, Nvidia announced Project Shield – a gaming system that, on paper, might just have what it takes to blow the doors off the handheld market completely.
Shield will run the latest version of Android, without any of the bloatware that many mobile manufacturers seem intent to layer on that operating system – so it’ll run fast. This means that it will have access to the Google Play store and the hundreds of thousands of apps and games that are available there. The five inch multitouch display means that anything your Android phone can run should be fully functional on the Shield. PlayStation Mobile simply can’t match that catalogue of bite-size, mobile games.
The Shield will also have access to Nvidia’s own Tegra Zone store, which showcases the games designed to make use of its powerful mobile processors. In here, you’ll be able to find an array of games which offer an experience much closer to that of a full console and some of them are already visually very impressive running on the Tegra 3 that’s in Asus’ Google Nexus 7, as well as plenty of other Android devices.
[drop2]Shield is packing Nvidia’s own Tegra 4 processor, which is powerful enough to push 4K (that’s four times 1080p) through its HDMI port, to a television. The Tegra 4 will, according to Nvidia, be capable of providing console quality visuals in a mobile form factor and it will also be appearing in a range of other Android devices later this year.It remains to be seen whether Nvidia will have the same pull with big publishers as Sony does – and it certainly hasn’t got the ability to provide a first party line up that can come anywhere close to Sony’s. But the chip-maker’s close relationship with PC developers is surely going to stand them in good stead for ensuring compatible releases at the more complex end of the scale.
Native software isn’t the only area that Nvidia’s exceptional knowledge of the PC development scene might be a boon. The Shield will be capable of streaming from your Kepler-equipped (GTX650 and above) PC, right to the device’s screen, via WiFi. The Shield will allow those of us with the right graphics cards in our gaming PCs to play games from our Steam libraries on a handheld. Nvidia has also said that they intend to add wireless relay to a (presumably Smart) TV too, so you could stream a game to the Shield from your PC and have it display on your TV, without wires.
So it’s a powerful handheld with a lot of potential. We’ve seen that before, of course. Whether the Shield will deliver on its initial promise will be a matter for history to decide but one thing is for sure: it’s going to have a part – big or small – in shaping the future of handheld gaming. When it’s released this spring (in the US and Canada, at least) it will offer an alternative to the Vita that is capable of as much and more, if it gets the right support. And if it fails to get the right kind of support through official channels, its open architecture might be enough to ensure it lives on through unofficial means.
Shield is, in my opinion, an ugly mess of product design that shows off everything that’s outdated and bizarrely immature about a lot of PC hardware design. It’s only missing a chromed, oversized screw and some blue LEDs. But a high resolution screen and plenty of input/output ports (including a Micro SD card slot and USB) make its dated, angular appearance forgivable. What it means for the handheld market, and what it might encourage other players in that market to do, makes for an incredibly exciting year ahead.
colmshan1990
That design isn’t just ugly, it’s stupid.
How am I supposed to control the touch screen comfortably with that controller in the way? How heavy is that thick screen, and what’s that going to do to the feel of the controller in the hand? Both the 3DS XL and PS Vita fit in my pockets, but I’m thinking that Shield is going to be a bit of a stretch.
The Shield’s biggest problem apart from the design which is obviously bad, is running Android.
The big games are simply not going to be as good as they can be, simply because those games are going to be designed to run on your Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X and all the other touch-only smartphones.
It’s not just controls that get hampered- surely you’ve noticed how enemies react slower, aiming is auto-aimed more often and other ‘features’ have crept into mobile games to make them easier to play with touch? That dumbing down will still be there when you play with buttons, only the game will be even easier.
Streaming is a no go unless you’re in the same house (AND have a top of the range gaming PC with the latest graphics card).
avengerrr
This is a good example of why Vita and 3DS are as they are, because they are focused on the handheld idea, not the ‘grab a ********* massive GPU and heatsink and shove in the hands.
I can’t see any appeal in the device whatsoever, what the hell is it for???
PC gaming I do on a PC, Console gaming I do on a Console. Sure it is cool for a PC game to be in the hands but streaming it when it can just be played on a PC…. WTF. At least with a Vita (and I defend it, not shove my dick in it and be a fan-boy) the console gaming idea is actually about putting console style gaming in to a handheld and doing so ergonomically.
Also I don’t know what all the hassle is with Vita, it is a device with another 6+ years to go. Who gives a **** for the sales if it does/will provide a solid game. Took a while for PSP t warm up but when it did there must have thousands of hours spent total.
bravotangosix
Sony develop various gadgets they then wait to see if they go mass market or not before they back them. Apart from the ps itself this has been the way Sony has approached every peripheral or handheld device. It’s as if they develop something fantastic and then release it in the hope it goes mass market before they throw all their eggs in one or two baskets and support them. Sony are being far too conservative with their approach to new hardware and its costing them big time. They need to grow a set and show a lot of commitment to what they develop because they do develop some fantastic hardware then ultimately fail to support it with superb software. They fail to take the chance and produce the software that will lead to greater hardware sales. THIS is why Sony don’t do good business with handhelds and peripherals.
wonkey-willy
well a least they used their noodle and made it look like an xbox controller and not the shitty ps3 pad
aerobes
Interesting. The controller is the main reason I prefer PS3 over 360. Only thing wrong with it in my opinion is L2 and R2 buttons fall away rather than cradling your fingers. The 360 pad is lovely to use but gives me hand cramp after prolonged use. :(
aerobes
“It’s ugly but that is easily forgiven if it performs as well as hoped.”
I don’t know. In todays modern the style is something wholly important to a lot of people. I think the looks will put many (who don’t know anything else about the device) off regardless of capabilities. Still, having said that the original DS sold a boatload (hell, a whole fleet of boats) and I’ve often found Sony’s Playstation design questionable. The original Playstation and the PS2 slim were beautiful though.