Pixel Gate UK looks talks about owning the Vita from launch, and seeing where it is today:
''The Playstation Vita is honestly one of the most curious products I’ve ever witness launch in the video game industry. After a decent marketing campaign, with various appearances across a number of events, the Vita launched. I purchased the system a day after it’s release, mostly as a ‘New job’ treat. The Vita instantly impressed me. The sleek design, the beautiful screen and visuals, the nifty bits and bobs, I loved it all. It remains as the best hand-held, at least technically, I’ve owned.''
In August, online servers for several PlayStation games will shut down, leaving their multiplayer functions unplayable.
whrere on earth is the next killzone, im soooOOO thirsty for some proper weighted, (but still fast when running/sprinting) fps gamplay, it felt sooso so good on ps3, with that, lets be honest, very small, quite uncomfortable sixaxis dualshock controller, that was just too small for western sized hands, ok for japanese kids i suppose was the point>??
now with PS5 controller, it would be totally masterfull.
I hear you. I want some NEW Killzone, especially on PS5, with the PS5 DualSense controller with that ever so impressive DualSense of an experience Haptic feedback!
Knowing how far Guerrilla has come since Horizon: Zero Dawn, Killzone can only benefit greatly from their ever growing talent!!
I think Sony has given up on their exclusive shooters. They haven't released a remaster for the Resistance series or a new SOCOM game either. I don't think Guerilla is in a rush to make Killzone since they have Horizon now too :(.
All I want is for them to build Killzone 2 with multiplayer included from the ground up, keep the gameplay the same, and I'll be happy.
GG with KZ3 and Shafowfall haven't been able to match KZ2 so I don't really have faith in another sequel.
Unfortunate that KZ2 came out during COD era where every game that didn't pay like Modern Warfare was deemed garbage. KZ2's multiplayer is definitely an all time great.
I'd love KZ2 multiplayer again. I also think they could easily incorporate a mode to compete with Battlefield style game modes
KZ2 was one of maybe a handful of games I actually put time into online. What a blast!! And the campaign was excellent as well. I certainly miss that dark world. Still ashamed I never buttoned up that Platinum.
A remake of Killzone 2 with the same grittiness and feel on PS5 would be f*cking incredible. The SP and MP were just perfect. I played the sh*t out of that game. Would happily pay a lot of money for that.
Honestly, I don't like FPS games. They're not for me, but I do agree that there was something about KZ2 multiplayer that even someone like me enjoyed.
Sony really needs to get better about tearing down servers. I don't like that they shut them down.
@Michiel1989
"since when was kz2 deemed garbage?"
As with anything, things don't get the appreciation it deserves until way after it's release.
KZ2 got a lot of flak for it's weighty controls that many mistook for input lag. People didn't like that it wasn't a twitch shooter like CoD. You also had people saying things like "it feels like you're controlling a midget", "enemies take too long to die" (you can't pray and spray in kz2. You have to shoot in bursts for your shots to be more accurate), people complained about the sniping, etc.
This led to a lot of changes in KZ3 that turned the vets off like reducing the amount of variables for bullet damage, getting rid of spawn grenades, etc.
@DarXyde
I don't think there's much Sony or any other company in that position can do much different about it... Keeping servers running simply cost money, these gomes don't generate none anymore, so eventually they need to pull the plug.
KZ2 was definitely better then KZ3, but the third one still had strong suits. It’s been many years but I remember something about Shadow Fall being made by a team at GG that did NOT do KZ2 and KZ3 multiplayer which is why it felt different. I remember when I found that out it made a lot of sense about Shadow Falls multiplayer feeling so off.
Horizon zero dawn sold more copies than all of the killzone franchise combined including spin offs on handheld. I guess that's the reason why won't see killzone from guerilla soon. There is at least one more mainline horizon coming out and their second team is working on horizon VR I believe. So it's gonna be a while unless another studio takes over.
I've been playing a lot of Killzone 2 on rpcs3 with a duelsense combined with the ability to remap controls to a modern standard and bump the game to 60fps it shows that we really need a remaster to probably the best killzone game to date although shadowfall technically beats it in the graphics department art style was so different that they are incomparable
Killzone went to the same place as Socom and Mag, more money in 25 hour single player games with no servers to maintain. Socom was literally the reason I bought a PS2, Resistance FOM the reason I bought a PS3, all gone now.
Killzone has never been weighted correctly, the jumping never worked.
A new properly-weighted shooter in the Killzone series would be great. More like Killzone 1 and 2 than SF.
I think the issue comes from the fact that the Helghast side is sympathetic while looking like Nazi stormtroopers. The Trump age has led artists to avoid this look entirely.
The sixaxis felt fine in my hands since they're small, but the ps5 really made me feel the difference. So ergonomic.
Killzone 2 was/is so good and it still looks good today. The multiplayer was fun as well. If they make a new Killzone I hope it is the style of Killzone 2.
I wish Sony didn’t abandon Resistance and Killzone. Those are some of my favorite series on PlayStation. If they’re not gonna make anymore, then maybe a remastered collection of each could be negotiated.
KILLZONE 2 was my reason for buying a PS3. If a new KILLZONE or RESISTANCE was coming out in 22 I would try to buy a PS5 immediately.
SSOD2 would be big for Sony. The only reason they would be interested in it is if they can turn it into a live service game.
In which I can see that happening.
For anyone trying to understand @Lightning77’s comment, they had a typo, this should clarify:
SOD2
Superoxide dismutase 2, mitochondrial, also known as manganese-dependent superoxide dismutase, is an enzyme which in humans is encoded by the SOD2 gene on chromosome 6.
After 5 killzone games including portable Sony felt it needed a break I wouldn't say its abandoned however I believe we may randomly get a ps5 remaster with improved lighting to test the waters and eventually a full blown new game after all you can't just leave shadowfall on that ending
Horizon is priority now its a mega franchise for them maybe after Horizon they might revisit.
I refuse to play for online play but there is one game that would make pay for it and that's Resistance Fall of Man. That's the only game that would make me throw my principles out of the window without feeling ashamed of myself.
Remember in the mid 2000’s when nearly every developer started to do FPS or linear third person? Now nearly every developer wants to do open world exclusively because it’s the easiest type of game to leave things out and then expand upon the world with DLC.
So many fond memories of both Shadowfall and Mercenaries Vita online! Shadowfall's SP may have been weak, but the MP was still a ton of fun. I had a lot of time in both, and it's especially tough seeing the Vita's best mp experience get shut down.
RIP my old friends.
In my opinion, I thought the single player games was really decent too and was treated quite harshly by the critics, but then, I think the Killzone franchise as a whole was kinda under rated by the critics. I always enjoyed the story in these games and I liked the slower, more deliberate gunplay too.
I remember getting my PS4 on day 1 and the first game I installed was Killzone Shadowfall, my workmates and I would play it for hours on end, the mode whish switched between game modes was brilliant.
The team stepped away and did Horizon which is fine, it's clearly a passion project they wanted to do, but it would be nice to get a new Killzone for current generation at some point. Same story for SP and Infamous, they've moved on and had success with another IP, but an Infamous on the PS5 would be incredible.
With the acquisition of Bungie you'd think Sony would have them make a proper Killzone game. Make Killzone Great Again!
There's already enough third party shooters (and now they have Destiny)... I don't imagine Sony is going to return to Killzone or Resistance. They know how profitable those franchises are (or aren't) and whether it is worth it to spend resources on them.
Resistance 3 had about 1.5 million and KSF just over 2 million. Those numbers aren't that great for AAA titles.
"and now they have Destiny"
Now? Destiny has been on Playstation since its launch in September of 2014.
Because Destiny is still multi-platform even after the Bungie acquisition and having an exclusive fps for Playstation is something entirely different.
You're just ignoring everything else? These franchises are not profitable. Horizon Zero Dawn itself sold more than all Killzone games combined.
Why do they need their own exclusive shooter? It has done nothing for them in the past. There are a crap ton of shooters already.
They did spawn Radec and that guy was a cheap arsehole.....God almighty, that boss fight!!! 😵💫
How can anyone see this, and not want another killzone game... i miss killzone 2's multiplayer so much!! https://youtu.be/IP2uC1nqwv...
I know right. I was waiting for it. Maybe they will offer the single player element now they don't have additional cost of thousands of new players jumping on the servers
That's kinda shitty considering there isn't a newer alternative, I get that many people probably aren't playing it but still. It's not that old either.
I suspect if you look, barely anyone is playing. I loved the Killzone games but honestly,I don't expect MP servers to be maintained indefinitely. Guaranteed the majority of people complaining haven't played Shadowfall for 10 years at this point.
Come on Sony. Give us a new Killzone already. We need a good new shooter for the PS5.
This was a great launch game for ps4 will make a great game re released with 4k60fps update
Very different response around these parts when MS, Ubi or EA announce something similar....
Ok. Same thing for how many years now. When PSN was free we had Warhawk, Twisted Metal, Socom, MAG, GOW ascension, Uncharted 2, The Last of Us, Killzone 2,
Resistance 2, Sniper Elite V2 just off the top of my head. 60 bucks a year or more now for online play and sony only produces single player movie games now. Which is fine but wheres the likes of warhawk and mag is all im saying.
I don't know. I pay for Xbox Live and I play the same games that people do on PSN for the most part.
We do have Halo and Gears but I got bored with those two so I stick with COD.
PP: Was Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified really that bad on the PS Vita?
In comparison to its console counterparts at the time? Yes. Yes it was. In comparison to DS versions? It was god like
I got tons of fun out of it.
Killzone was better, yeah. Heck even Resistance online was better. But CoD Resistance and Modern Combat and such were all fun to change it up a bit when you've grinded too many hours into Killzone.
If i had to review them, yeah, all those games would get a low af score except Killzone. But i had fun plowing through the Resistance campaign and playing online and goofing off with CoD online while travelling. Not everything has to be a masterpiece but they were all fun enough for what they were lol
How is a system so loved within its community considered a commercial failure, and how did the Nintendo Switch take its idea and run with it?
Highly overpriced proprietary memory, and Sony showing it little support, themselves?
Agree with the support but the overpriced memory was always overblown. The switch is an handheld charging 60 for games instead of 40 as they always had before...yet that cost hike is fine.
As someone with both a Vita and PSP GO, it really made me curious why Sony felt the need to make a dedicated memory card when they already had one that was more than adequet. The M2 format (that the Go uses) is virtually the exact same size and shape as the vita... just flipped. It would have made things so much easier for people to buy into it, especially if they were able to insert their existing memory card with their purchased games on it.
I really like the vita, I also think they had a huge missed opportunity with not having TV out. I like to pop my Go onto the TV dock and play some games now and then (doing the switch thing before the switch). Doing that with a vita would have been awesome, especially with full DS4 support.
The only thing is the Switch isn’t a handheld, it’s a hybrid of both. So there isn’t really a “cost hike” sure you get an overall lower quality or “handheld” quality when playing portably, but you do get better quality and performance when playing in “console mode”
And yes I know people are gonna say “bUt thE sWitCh iS wEAk” and compared to the PS4 and XOne absolutely, but it’s still console quality games. And the quality is much higher than on any handheld before.
The Vita was a great system, but people’s expectations were too high. It was definitely a capable system, but not as capable as people thought it would be. I don’t remember if Sony said this, but it was said that the Vita would be able to deliver PS3 quality games and it ultimately couldn’t.
And yes the memory cards were definitely an issue. There are countless complaints about it. Nobody wanted to pay $120 for a 32gb memory card https://www.gamespot.com/ar...
I mean compare the scope and size of a 3DS game (Link Between Worlds) and compare that to Breath of the Wild and tell me that the additional price doesn't warrant itself.
The overpriced memory was not overblown, it's the only reason why the Vita failed.
You had 4, 8, 16 and 32GB cards, but anything below 32GB was too small and a 32GB was $100 at launch, which was way too expensive. A SD card of the same size was like $25.
$249 was a great price for the OG PSP. PS Vita launching at $249 years later for what it did was a steal compared to PSP. Nintendo dropped their price because it made 3DS seem expensive against it for inferior hardware. It worked.
Yeah. The cards were expensive. But look at the flip side. Many gamers stole games on PSP by downloading them from online. Just like they did with PS1 and PS2 games. And we see how DRM gets cut through in software so fast that that wouldn't have been enough. SD Card would have guaranteed theft immediately. They tried something different. Didn't work out.
The games were coming. Problem was, gamers weren't supporting it like they were with PS4. Gamers either complained the games were expensive or that the games were hand me downs or lesser than console like Uncharted. And with mobile phones powerful enough to play games that looked just as good as portable consoles for cheap or free with ads, something had to give. Sony even gave gamers the ability to stream PS4 games at home or anywhere in the world. Even that wasn't enough for some.
Nintendo has ruled the mobile market for decades. It's why they can weather the storm of challengers and mobile. And with new customers being born all the time, Nintendo rides its same properties like Disneyland. But new in house IPs are almost non existent.
The only thing Switch did was have no opposition. No competitor. Microsoft was too cowardly to try ever and Sony gave it a shot. TWICE. Now, if we flip the article around, we can ask how Sony had been successful with PS4 and PS5, while Nintendo failed at dedicated home consoles and ran to mobile.
Except they didn’t run to mobile? They’ve always had “mobile” devices, and they’ve proved in the past, gimmick or not that they can have a hugely successful system.
They literally just took the best part of the Wii U and made it independent. The Switch is a home console as well as a handheld, not just a handheld but people like that as an added option.
And while Nintendo has definitely had a few poor selling home consoles they haven’t failed by any means, “mobile console” or not it’s still successful.
Plus money is money. It doesn’t really matter if Nintendo is making it with a home console or a handheld. Just like Sony saw the handheld wasn’t viable so they dropped it to focus more on PS4.
they failed once, with the Wii U... so you could say that but you'd be reaching Apocalypse.
@persona4chie "And while Nintendo has definitely had a few poor selling home consoles they haven’t failed by any means"
What would you call the WiiU? Nintendo ditched that pretty fast and went to a new console after a few years. WiiU (came out Nov 2012) had 13.56 million sales as of December 31, 2019. Switch has around 80 million and it came out just under 4 years ago.
That said, they learned from their utter failure with the WiiU and came out with the Switch.
Nintendo has failed more than once. Home and portable consoles. But name a portable console competitor to the Switch? I'll wait...still waiting...still waiting...
What some fail to mention, is that Nintendo has/had no direct competition to Switch. Zero. They also fail to see that Nintendo has been the dominant portable console maker since Gameboy. Not one portable has won against Nintendo since then. Targeting Vita is foolish as the market leader has always been Nintendo.
As for home consoles, Nintendo basically abandoned the formula of building a dedicated home console. They built a hybrid that's really a portable that replaced 3DS and happens to connect to a TV. But we all know its use and tech specs is mobile. Trying to spin that it's a home console is ridiculous when it can't even play certain games on home consoles. That's why it's streaming certain games. Why? It's a mobile platform. That just happens to have no competition. And Nintendo has been riding on underpowered products while selling the same properties without new IPs for years. At least we can say with Sony, they make new franchises EVERY GENERATION. Something Nintendo doesn't do.
Summary: Nintendo has always been portable market leader for years. And now, they have no competition. Not even from 3DS. So, of course Switch is going to sell unopposed. Vita would have been destined to be second fiddle to Nintendo with portables regardless. Even if Sony would have stuck with Vita.
No first party support, end of story, they set it up to fail. I still have mine but after launch there was third party support only. They left it to die.
Yeah I had a vita on two separate occasions, and I loved it. But like you said, they created this great system and then said “alright go die”
@persona. Right I really liked the system. I even bought the pstv thingy to play my vita games on the tv too
It did get a lot of first party support for the first couple of years, but what happened is that third parties didn't know what to do with it. Toned down ports on the cheap, or risky new IPs or AA spinoffs,
They all held back and waited to see someone else take the plunge but it never happened and sales of the Vita didn't pick up, leaving Indies and slowly dwindling first party support.
Name the big third party games on Vita. Assassins Creed Lady Liberty? That CoD game?
Nothing from Capcom.
Nothing from Konami.
Koei Tecmo supported it well but all ports.
Bandai Namco had Ridge Racer that got slammed due to weird content behind paywalls.
Also didn't help that the media slammed anything that wasn't breaking new ground. Strange how the Switch gets a free pass on that.
Anyway, it did get Darius Burst CS, which is also on PS4, but is portable shmup excellence.
This isn't true. There were a ton of (very well done) first-party Vita games in the first couple years -- Unit 13, Killzone Mercenary, Uncharted, Little Big Planet, etc.
They did choose to cater to an older audience, which may have been a mistake.
Nope. Games. Plain and simple. It didn't even have the games like the PSP did. Such a shame for such a wonderful hardware
Even today people are still not willing to accept that what you stated with the overpriced memory and Sony showing little support was a big factor leading to the Vita failure. I remember wanting to a Vista, but was really turned off by the proprietary memory price. Sony abandoned the PS eyetoy on the PS2, the Vita, and PS Move. The PSVR got more support, but Sony could definitely do more
Pretty much Sony ditched it to focus on PS4. Can’t say I blame them, but it is disappointing. If Nintendo can manage to put out games for handhelds and main consoles-I would assume Sony could too.
Oh definitely and the Vita would have been the perfect system for it. The PSP sold how much? 80m? That’s really damn good. If the vita 1. Had more first party support from Sony. 2. Had cheaper memory cards or used SD cards (the 32gb card cost and eye watering $120 at launch) and 3. Maybe launched at a cheaper price, maybe $50 cheaper it would have easily been a success.
I personally skipped the vita because memory was just so damn expensive - then eventually, Sony gave up on supporting it.
it got nowhere near the love that the PSP got, which is an absolute shame cause it paired pretty well with the PS4.
The only thing Sony cared about was protecting its image against piracy. They were willing to destroy it for the sake of saving face to its investors after the PSP. Same approach they took with not allowing external storage on the ps5.
The Vita failed due to Sony, had nothing to do with the market. It was Sony's short-sightedness by using expensive proprietary memory cards that was the first hurdle. Then pulling their own 1st party support way too early was the nail in the coffin.
The Vita let you play your PSP and PS1 classic collection at no cost if you bought them digitally. And the Switch gives you the privilege of rebuying your games at full price. Nintendo loves their customers.
Eh, to be honest that has more to do with technology than anything. You could have said the same for the PS4. Nintendo has historically supported backwards compatibility with most of their consoles, and all of their handhelds. Switch was just such a big shift that they had no choice but to drop BC.
That said, they could have charged less than $60 for their ports. Also they didn't need to get rid of virtual console, since that was just emulation anyway. They could've given players a way to transfer their purchases to the new Switch online store.
Sony supported the Vita with first-party content for 3 years only then they announced they would no longer support the Vita with first-party exclusives. Overpriced memory cards didn't help either. In 2016 I got rid of my Vita.
When the Vita was out Nintendo had the DS.
But yes, the Switch and PS4 or PS5 aren’t really the same thing.
While it wasn't a hybrid in itself, the device was advertised to work with the PS4 via remote play, making your home console games portable, I think that is why people like to compare the two.
It really came down to how Sony handled things. They clearly weren't passionate about the Vita like they were with the PSP when it launched, so it's no wonder the vast majority of the public weren't either. They chose to go with a proprietary memory card that was bloody expensive, and became more and more difficult to acquire even while the Vita was technically current.
That Sony set the record for the best selling direct competitor to a Nintendo handheld with 80+ million PSPs sold is no small feat. The demand for a successor was clearly there. But, since its direct competitor was more well-promoted and had more software support, in addition to using a much more common memory card format that was much easier and cheaper to acquire, it's no wonder the Vita didn't do nearly as well. I suppose it slightly edged out the disaster that was the WiiU, so Nintendo isn't without their failures, but that's a discussion for another time.
Sure memory cards hurt but I really don’t think that was the main problem. The real killer was that the system never got the quality of games it needed to get established. A couple early hits of the standard of breath of the wild, mario or a big monster Hunter might have got it going.
Instead Vita got a lacklustre uncharted, terrible COD, mediocre killzone, awful resistance and a couple of (decent but niche) games like tearaway and gravity rush and then suddenly AAA support ended to be replaced by endless indies. That catalogue simply wasn’t good enough to sustain it.
Ultimately consoles live or die based on the quality games and games alone and that’s what killed vita. Shame. It was a nice bit of kit in its day...
PS4 was released a year after. They put all their focus on that and let the VITA die a slow death, it wasn't the memory cards (even tho I agree they were and still are expensive). Maybe after a couple of years of ps5 they can try again and put some focus on a handheld, I'd buy it
It was the proprietary memory and lack of first party. If was capable of taking microSD cards it would've been fine for me.
I loved the vita. Expensive memory cards was a pain. Then Sony pulling first party support. This was also a pain. But I still loved the vita at that point. Still played the games I owned. I stopped using it after YouTube support was pulled though.
@rdgneoz3 yeah they abandoned it because they knew it wasn’t doing well and people were confused by what the console was. You could arguably call the GameCube a failure too compared to the PS2s sales as well as the N64. The point is Apocalypse made it sound like Nintendo just doesn’t do well at all in the home console market, so they “switched to mobile” when in reality technically only the Wii U was a failure.
The NES, SNES, Wii and Switch were/are very successful. And sure the N64 and GameCube didn’t sell that well compared to the competition they were decently successful and did far better than the Wii U.
Its pretty simple really. Nintendo, unlike Sony, simply decided to support their handheld.
PS Vita is still the best handheld console games... You can play another ps1 or 2 games on it. Keep calm....
You guys didn't grasp the history of Sony, the change over from Kaz as head of SCE to parent CEO was the key factor on why the Vita was made to die out.
Vita was a project of Kaz and leaving SCE meant who ever took the reigns would be motivated to shut down as much projects as possible to appease Kaz as CEO's mantra of cost cutting and focusing on core Sony.
Had Kaz remained at SCE I can only imagine the Vita project would have steered towards addressing some of the criticisms rather than remaining as a non-priority platform. High priced memory cards and low volume first party support are only symptoms of what management has done to it.
The Vita died purely because Sony gave it absolutely no support. They launched no games for it themselves after a handful of very good launch window titles and then gave it no marketing support so 3rd party devs had no interest in developing for it either.
Real shame as it was a great bit of kit. Wish I hadn't sold mine.
Sony had HDMI adapters for their Vita devkits.
All they had to do was make one for retail, and push it as a hybrid handheld/console. They didn't. Dumb.
Could have been the best handheld ever. Sony really dropped the ball with the Vita.
I bought mine at launch and have really enjoyed it but the games support hasn't been there.
i love how everyone speak of psvita how if japan don't exist,psvita in japan isn't a accesory.psvita is getting great games,if you not like his games is you problem,let at the rest enjoy his games what are different.to play westerns big budget games we have enought machines.
i loved my Vita got it launch day, really played that hell out of it over the years, but man i've really been thinking about trading it in for the new 3DS the past couple of weeks or so.
Yeah they pretty much cut off life support after Borderlands 2 Vita came out, a shame really considering how much of a lead it has over the competition in terms of hardware.
I've been wanting to get a Vita for a very long time! Should I get one? This will fit perfectly with my gaming collection.