A Very Happy Fourth Birthday to Our Fave Handheld, PS Vita

I think I got mine about two years ago, mainly to play games like LBP, Uncharted and Tearaway. And then this year I played the Danganronpa series, Persona 4 Golden and Project Diva f, making it my most played system this year. It definitely has its flaws (I'm looking at you AVLS), but I'll definitely continue to enjoy it.

Bought mine with a copy of Uncharted: Golden Abyss about two weeks after launch. Great system, haven't regretted the purchase. I have a lot of games - physical copies and digital, AAA and indie - for it.

I enjoy my Vita as much as N3DS, they are both awesome and probably last handheld dedicated gaming devices...

It is a solid handheld, it has its own niche, you will not find these type of games on the 3DS, you will not find these type of controls on mobile.

Personally I think Sony will make sure third party titles are supporting the system into 2017.

It's my favourite console! I would love to see it getting more love but...if you own one you're probably loving it, right? Happy Birthday, little one.

I use my vita as a Ridge Racer Type 4 machine. With occasional bouts of Geometry Wars and Final Fantasy.

Even in these very here Vita Forums no one hardly posts anymore - very telling.

We need Sony to put every ps2, genesis, dreamcast, c64, Amiga and Jaguar game on the hand held to turn it into the ultimate retro console!!!

love my vita! about to finish up Hyperdimension Action Neptunia U. pretty much use it as a rpg machine

@themcnoisy

Same here, it's great for racing and fighting games.

• Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max
• Darkstalkers Chronicles
• The King of Fighters Collection
• Samurai Shodown Anthology
• Dead or Alive 5 Plus
• Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed
• Ridge Racer R4
• Wipeout 2048 w Fury and HD Expansions
• Motorstorm RC
• Burnout Legends
• Burnout Dominator
• Midnight Club LA Remix

Plus

• Metal Slug Anthology

Got mine at launch and although the support its been given in recent years probably would have put me off had I known . But I'm glad I stuck with it, I've got a great mix of games 50 so far and a 64gb memory card that's made it a truly portable machine. Still I wish some of the big western studios had supported it I'd love to play a new infamous on the go.

@gingerfrog

It's annoying to think that had Sony supported it with software past holiday 2013, and allowed micro SD support with the Vita Slim, it could have sold 25-30 million units by now to a hardcore user base with a high attach rate. They dropped the ball there.

"Our fave handheld"? That's a funny way of spelling 3DS

@Jayvir

Go back to NintendoLife.

Wow. Nice response. I guess Vita owners don't have a sense of humor. The 3ds is by far the better handheld and the sales confirm it. There is a reason why Sony wont make any of their own game for it. I had to sell my Vita after 2 years of nothing but ports. But hey if you like ports and nothing but Hyper Dimension Neptunia, then be my guest. I'm a Sony fan as much as I am Nintendo, but the Vita is not even close to be as good.

@Jayvir

The 3DS has some gems, but it's very platformer and JRPG heavy. I like racing games, the only damn thing playable on the device is Mario Kart 7 and Ridge Racer 3D from 2011.

@Jayvir I have both and though I play my 3DS much much more I do quite enjoy having a Vita too. It's got a lot of great games that the 3DS wouldn't be able to handle, but each system is truly a gem in it's own right! :3

@sub12 Ridge Racer 3D is like the best game ever. Eeeeever. Don't diss mah favorite launch title.

@Azikira

I'm not dissing it, Ridge Racer 3D and MK7 are the only good racers on the platform. I played both, they are good

Go to Vita, click on genres in the store, click racing (or fighting, etc), and you can quickly understand why some people prefer the Vita over the 3DS.

@Azikira Of course the 3DS wouldn't be able to handle some games. Pretty games don't always mean better games. I personally would take something like Etrian Mystery Dungeon or Monster Hunter 4 over Killzone or Freedom Wars. Like you said though, each system has its gems. It's just that even Sony gave up on the Vita. I think that says something

Sorry my Vita doesn't feel like celebrating as it's suffering from depression due to a serious lack of being fed good, new games...

I bought mine about a year ago and after the first few months I've rarely used it. I bought a fair few games but my memory card corrupted and even though I still want to play Killzone, Unit 13 and the psp Star Wars Battlefront I end up wanting other games for my PS4. Good system just PS4 takes all my gaming time up unfortunately. Now if it got another good AAA game or a western RPG I would 100% play but that's never happening.

@Jayvir Bah quit your bellyaching and stop being a 3DS fanboy of a troll. Just go back to NintendoLife whereas you might as well be one over there. You add nothing to the ps site if you are purposely bashing the vita. I bet you are a troll on the ganefaqs vita boards.

Might as well shove your own unpopular opinions down others throats because that is all you are good for.

@Palsy I cracked a joke and you all jump on my case. After you all flip the hell out, I explain why I prefer my 3DS and then I get called a troll. Man, you all are really insecure.

And yes, Sony already said they won't be making games for Vita a long time ago. Do you not follow news here or do you just blindly ignore anything that you don't like? http://www.polygon.com/2015/10/24/9608434/playstation-vita-new-games-sony

@sub12 @Jayvir Do not worry Jayvir is a 3DS covert troll just because he wants the ps vita to be killed off.by Sony which they won't do...

@Jayvir And you are not? Hypocrite confirmed.

@Jayvir A hypocrite harass garbage 3DS fanboy.

@Jayvir Might as well be covert on the ps blog because you know you are always right... Go you! You are a star!

@Palsy Oh gee... thank you so much! I'm very glad you think so!
The funny thing is that you have to resort to name calling. Keep it up though

@Jayvir Funny thing is you resort to covert trolling which makes you look like you are giving a bad name for yourself. Keep it up though.

@Palsy I'm not even trolling. I have an opinion that the Vita isn't better than the 3DS and suddenly that's trolling?

@Jayvir Might as well call you a casual player that likes stupid same rehashes on a Nintendo platform. No wonder they said you are a NintendoLife junkie, makes sense now.

@Palsy Once again with the name-calling. Are you literally incapable of rational thought? I wasn't aware that owning a Ps4, Ps3, Ps2, PS1, PSP, and at one point a freaking Vita was a casual player on Nintendo platforms. Look up my PSN ID dude, JVir. I've been a PS fan for over a decade.

@Jayvir Hmmm telling others that this article misspelled 3DS for Vita. Yeah, hypocrite troll at best. :/

@Palsy Humor isn't your strong suit I see.

@Jayvir Depends how you use it.

@Jayvir keep up this crusade though. You are so desperate.

@Palsy Pot calling the kettle black, now. How mature of you. You have not had anything to contribute to ANYTHING I've said in any of my earlier posts. People like @sub12 and @azikira I can respect because they can actually respond to what I said with their own informed opinion and not flip out and throw out insults. You? Nope.

@Jayvir No respect to someone that is try hard.

Maybe next year I will get me a cheap Vita, still would like to try Golden Abyss, the original Tearaway and other games I may have missed. Besides, some of my PS4 games are cross play and that is something I cannot take advantage of right now.

@Jayvir Probably said your opinion out of context and besides it isn't a fact.

@Jayvir They did not say AAA games though and they confirmed to be making.games not like Uncharted. You read stuff way too seriously without real evidence

@get2sammyb I'm on my very first P4 playthrough, and it's great. Lifestyle wise, it fits mine perfectly, whether I'm escaping into a quite corner for half hour on a Sunday afternoon, or playing in bed with the headphones in while the wife's asleep. I've even ranremote play destiny strikes on it while the kids watched cbeebies lol. I have the 3ds too, but this is definitely my go to machine. And the psp and ps1 classics I have now been able to play from the store on its library up even more.

Happy Birthday and Viva la Vita

@Jayvir Look at the article where shuhei yoshida says they are making games but not AAA stuff and not a whole lot. Better than no vita games at all though...

"And y'know we don't give a flip about sales numbers."

Ha! Ya right. I might actually believe that if not for the fact PS4 sales articles are posted on nearly a weekly basis here.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

The Vita seems like a well designed piece of kit which I have always been tempted by. The one point I thought which would change in future designs was the lack of inbuilt memory. Having an acceptable amount of memory would have been a selling point. Instead they decided to charge high amounts for extra storage which is really cheap to produce.

As to poor sales maybe the Vita just came at the wrong time with the popularity of tablets and gaming on phones. I also thought that they should have sold packages that included a PS4 and vita together being as you can use the remote play option.

I guess that Sony will not try again with another handheld. But I am happy the people who have it seem to really love the product

I've have some memorable Vita experiences. Notably Final Fantast X, Persona 4 Golden and Wipeout 2048. Oh, and Persona 4 Dancing All Night.

The problem with Vita is, while it's got a decent sized library, the vast majority of it is subpar or mediocre. The top games on the system are ports or remakes, or even ports of remakes.

And the bigger issue is that there's virtually nothing in the pipeline for it. Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel will be the last game I'm looking forward to. I mean sure, it's getting a port of World of Final Fantasy and one other game I'm forgetting, but I'll probably buy those on PS4. If they're even good (SE doesn't have best track record with FF spin offs).

The 3DS is clear-cut proof that great games really are all that matters. That's all the Vita's ever needed- it's all I've ever wanted. But it is what it is. I'll take what I can get and I'll enjoy it to the fullest. Not worth getting upset over. I've got 4 other platforms with top-tier games releasing on a regular basis. Vita is just a small supplement. If it provides me with 1 or 2 extra games worth playing each year, well hey, I'll take it.

@JaxonH You bring up a great point, it's the library that sells the Vita short. The hardware is phenomenal and I thought that OLED looked amazing but when all you have is, like you listed, a lot of ports, or mediocre NIS games (although I'm a fan of some like Trinity Universe and Disgaea), it doesn't really make much of an impression. Even with lacking visuals, 3DS killed it. I'm sure if I kept my Vita for longer, I probably could have found something to play, but I can't just settle for something like that. Besides, a lot of the games end up on PS4 anyways!

And sales numbers only matter when your device is selling well. Everyone knows that! Although, to be fair, the Vita had a decent resurgence in Japan for a while... for what it's worth

The most underrated, under appreciated and under used piece of tech I think I ever owned; the vita is just lovely!

(Creepy) Confession: I sometimes sleep with my Vita even when I didn't play with it.

Even today I still think Sony can turn things around and I even feel they should release a hardware revision with an L2 and R2. With remote play getting increasingly better and PSnow which strategy Sony has to rethink the Vita is so easy marketable, I'm not even talking native games here. Just make it mimic a PS4 controller and promote it heavily as a gamepad with also a portable gaming function and sell em for $99, which can easily be done. Make the memory cards cheaper and let others manufacturers make them as well, but with a 1gb HDD most won't even need it because they'll use it as a gamepad.

I know what you'll thinking: the Wii U failed, the Vita failed, why would this re-introduction/ reiteration work? Because they'll market it right this time! Remote play should get its own commercials, people should retroactively get all PS+ games they didn't "tag" because they didn't own a Vita for free, or at least 5 games like Uncharted and Marvel vs Capcom in some sort of "Vault". I have friends that have both a Vita, which they stopped using after 1,5 years, and a PS4 that didn't know about remote play until I told them and they wouldn't believe me at first.

The technology is there and the succes of the PS4 will be the catalyst for the 'New Vita' and people will love it and take it to bed with them, even if they didn't play on it that evening because the missus thought it'd be nice to discuss how the boys are doing at school for once... Didn't even know they were already going to school.... Aah time flies, 4 years old, my little man. Xoxo

@get2sammyb Thanks he was very insulting.Best thing to do is buy both.Like I did.I play my vita more than my 3DS.DO NOT Troll before you buy and play the console.

Happy bday Vita. You may not have sold as well as Sony and third parties would have liked.(Not that it's your fault.) But you are a very nice, luxury game system who serves its primary audience well. And hey, I plan to get a Vita in February. For PS1 Classics, PS2 Classics, cross stuff, remote play, and games not on PS4.

@WebHead happy Birthday Vita.

I have kids, so no one appreciates this handheld more then me. It allows them to be happy watching whatever on the TV and me playing Vita/PS4 games on the chair/toilet/bed, you know, wherever...

I would love it more if they release a case that gives it proper L2 & R2 buttons. Can only find 1 case like this online but its only for the newer Vita

@Jayvir
First off, and this is true for all platforms- I recognize some get great enjoyment from Vita. And I say good for them. I'm happy to see people satisfied, whatever their taste may be.

It may not have many great games from my pov (and many others) but, to me there's no magic threshold a platform must reach to be viable and enjoyable.

Imo Vita gets the least amount of play, BUT, I don't really like comparing it because as long as there's even ONE game worth playing, it has value to me.

For the past couple years, there was maybe 2-3 Vita games I played. But that's ok. That's 2-3 more than if I didn't own one. Like I said I may play it least among all the platforms but I do play it from time to time. And that to me makes it worth owning.

Do I wish it had better support and wasn't neglected by Sony? Well of course. But no sense crying over spilt milk. It is what it is and I've accepted that. Basically, any future games that release on Vita that are good enough to get playtime from me is a bonus. If nothing else, it's a good device for having all the Final Fantasy games on.

@sub12 @Azikira what's ridge racer 3d? I'm very intrigued indeed. Is it on Vita?

@Boerewors My wife does that too, the other night I was planning on playing through Life is strange - boom - 2 hour conversation on kids future followed by a walk to the car. *Edit actually that was parents evening I think.... *Edit2 crikey that wasn't even my wife it was a teacher....

@Jayvir "The 3ds is by far the better handheld and the sales confirm it." More sales don't confirm anything is better - other than in a competition for more sales obviously lol. I like both the 3ds (2ds in my case) and vita. On both I've played more old games though - most notably super Mario bros 3 and Ridge Racer type 4. The best handheld of all time is the original game boy - fact. (that's not fact just my opinion but I added it in for frivolity and effect)

@Patinator snap, pretty much identical situation for me.

@VatoLoco47 that is pretty much essential and something I miss terribly. MGS 3 is super impossible to play on the Vita.

@themcnoisy I would be in major support of Sony turned the VITA into a retro console. Bring it on.

A shame there's nothing worth celebrating about...

@Jayvir
Sales confirm nothing and both handhelds are the worst in their line of generations.

Happy Birthday, PS Vita!
Time for some Freedom Wars to celebrate =p

@themcnoisy

Ridge Racer 3D was a launch title exclusive for the 3DS in 2011, pretty much standard Ridge Racer, aolid though.......really the last game in the series that was worth picking up.

I only play my Vita when I'm out and about, but very glad to have it when I am! There's still some PS Plus games on it I haven't tried yet, and need to still finish a load of other games, so it's got a great lifespan left in it for me!

@get2sammyb I started up Persona 4... that seems to be a big time suck. Really great gameplay/story, etc.

...wtf is a Vita? Hahaaaa, I kid! Happy (posthumous) Birthday!

:: plays 3DS ::

@JaxonH
I mean lets face it, to some degree all of us care about sales numbers. I know I do. They're not always a deciding factor in decisions companies will make but they definitely do factor in sometimes. So if there's a game or console I really like, I want to see it do well. Maybe that's weird but I'd be lying if I said I don't pay close attention to the charts. Of course I don't look at those and say 'game x is awesome because it sold x millions' or 'a console is better than b console because it sold more.'

@Boerewors
"(Creepy) Confession: I sometimes sleep with my Vita even when I didn't play with it."

TMI, dude!

At this point I have two Vitas, a PlayStation tv, and two psps (3001 and Psp go). While I have a couple gameboy advanced (original and sp ags-101), ds lite, and new 3ds xl, the Sony consoles are by far my favorites to play on. Over this last year, I've been playing on them more than my other handhelds or my home consoles. Between vita games, psp games, and PlayStation games, I've really found my RPG heaven from Sony. I think I'll be happy playing with my psps and vitas for the next couple of years, but I also would love to see a new handheld from Sony. Just because the vita didn't do as well as the psp shouldn't be any reason for Sony to think they shouldn't make another handheld. There's obvious reasons for the low sales of the vita. Proprietary memory card prices, original price, lack of AAA games in recent years, are the large issues, but Nintendo has shown that even in a time of super powered phones and tablets, there is still a good sized market for a dedicated handheld console. I love the vita, but I'd still love to see a successor in the next year or two.

@Jayvir You should listen to @Punished_Boss_84. It may save you from your sanity.

Good luck!

@Punished_Boss_84 If you mean as far as expecting AAA exclusives, No! Third party Jrpgs, Indies and western ports? Yes so much!

Let us not forget BigFest but I guess nobody cares by now exclusive or not...

@Gamer83
Well right. I want all platforms to sell well, but I don't really sweat it one way or the other because it's out of my control.

@JaxonH
Of course. If something doesn't sell well, nothing I can do about it. Doesn't mean it's not disappointing. I still to this day am a little saddened when the Dreamcast is brought up and I think of it not getting a full console cycle. But it is what it is.

What @gamer83 said

@Gamer83 that's a fair point, for me Its not so much the Dreamcast as the Amstrad 6128. This is going back moons ago - but I think a fair comparison so bear with me. The 6128 was much better than the other 3 main computers at the time (c64, spectrum and Amstrad 464) in many ways like the Vita in comparison to the 3ds and mobile phones. Yet Amstrad never got behind it with a strong and continual marketing campaign, so companies rarely retailed games on floppy disc, and if they did those games rarely took advantage of the extra memory or power. So it was pointless buying a 6128 in the end - you bought the half as powerful 64k machines instead, with a huge backlog of games.

@hi_drnick lets start a petition!!! We want every neo geo game on vita!!! Also master system and Sega Saturn. Also the pc engine and Atari st!!! Wow what a console that would make.

I keep finding hidden gems to play on my ps vita. Steins;gate at the moment.
My most played console since its released.
Backlog off games will keep me going for another 18months.

@themcnoisy Good news i did some research and found this! There will be a L2/R2 case for the old vita also!!!
http://www.play-asia.com/l2r2-button-grip-cover-for-pch-1000-black/13/709ikh

Vita is the best handheld currently on the market. I love my Vita and it has stayed my main gaming platform for years. I currently have a gaming PC, ps3 and a 3ds. I have owned xbox360 and regular DS. Out of these gaming devices Vita is my favorite.
It is too bad that Vita was marketed as a substitute for home consoles which clearly was not needed. Instead Vita needed games designed for portable format.

Happy Birthday, Vita!

@VatoLoco47 that's awesome. Wonder how the L2 / R2 buttons connect?

Long live the Vita and happy birthday you handsome devil!

@TurmoilingPoint
Not having an interest in a sea of JRPGs, Indies and a handful of western ports equals nothing worth celebrating about. To me.

I use it for remote play whenever I'm stuck somewhere with WiFi. Combined with the PS4s standby mode, it makes gaming on the go very easy! Probably half of my Fallout 4 playtime has been on the Vita!

Other games I have sunk a lot of time on with it. The Legend of Dragoon. Rainbow Moon. Plus a few more.

@Punished_Boss_84 What about the 3DS?

@Punished_Boss_84 Whatever floats your boat. Don't regret it if we have a rumored GTA in the works if it does happen and when it does. So I am guessing you will only stick to the PS4 the console that is actually selling? :/

@maamets Right here with ya bro!

I don't regret buying one as I've enjoyed the few games I own for it but I've played it by far the least out of any console I own by a long margin.

@get2sammyb Thank you, those posts were quite annoying, offensive and pointless. Be a troll, pay the toll, eh?

@Jayvir Glad to see you can respect other people's opinions! I truly do love both consoles, both for very different reasons. Nintendo will always have that kiddish charm that pulls me back, but the Vita is a powerhouse and is practically a portable PS3. Heck, I'd even be happy just to see more PS3 games ported to the system (Bioshock, anyone?).
It's kind of funny, I just lost a whole ton of Subscribers on my YouTube channel for voicing my opinion about Bayonetta being in Smash Bros, and nobody has any sort of argument other then "You're just a hateful troll" when I had clearly explained why I didn't like the character.

@themcnoisy As stated above, it was a 2011 launch title for the 3DS. An arcade style racing game if you've never played a Ridge Racer game before, but the game is really fantastic and every 3DS owner should have it. If you have a 3DS/2DS and ever come across it, it's truly a gem and you should definitely pick it up.

@TurmoilingPoint
Same situation, but instead it's nothing but Nintendo games (very limited in genre), various JRPGs & a sea of shovelware. If Pokemon were still good, it wouldn't be gathering dust.

PS4? Games are what sell me on a console, not sales (they may be related but not with my purchasing decision). It is not my fault that both handhelds are very limited in their games lineup.

@Punished_Boss_84 May not be to someone else though...

Depending on the user, opinions go from the Vita having notable games in abundance to only having a few. Some folks are still making observations on why the Vita under-performed in sales. As it is my first-ever Playstation console, ports are not a problem because they would be all-new experiences for me. Seeing as how it is unrealistic for devs to put a lot of money into creating a "AAA" title for it, ports are a fine alternative to expanding the library. There's such a rich back catalogue of games that could be ported that there are so many possibilities.

Crazy suggestion that ignores business-savvy: Port each of the campaigns from Resident Evil 6 as separate, episodic releases to the PS Vita. Revelations 2 (Vita) may have had frame-rate issues but it made the top 10 in sales in Japan. Release Leon's in a physical retail version and include the option of downloading the others (Jakes, Chris', and Ada's) from the PSN a la Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD. (They already have some of the assets b/c RE 6 maps were included in Revelations 2 Raid Mode.)