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Non-NEC Console Related Discussion => Chit-Chat => Topic started by: Nando on October 17, 2012, 09:45:54 AM
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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-10-16-roundtable-saving-ps-vita
from the article:
"...in the interest of revitalizing the Vita, the GamesIndustry International staff went around the horn, each picking one challenge the system is facing and suggesting how Sony can best meet that challenge. There's no telling if these suggestions would be enough to save the system in a world gone mad for tablets and smartphones, but it would be tough to make things much worse. So let's get straight to it and start with the single biggest problem facing the Vita today."
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The biggest problem with the Vita is that nobody asked for it. It's hard to fix that.
Sure phones are hurting the traditional handheld game market, but Nintendo is still doing fine.
The old PSP wasn't exactly a barn burner either until Monster Hunter and Bandai's anime base titles turned it into a must have. With out those games, and without Nintendo's business, and now minus the iPhone crap, what's left over isn't a lot, and that's what the Vita has to work with.
I *suppose* I'd rather play the next Super Robot Wars on the Vita as opposed to the 3DS, but frankly I could do either, and I already have a 3DS.
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I'm a big fan of the PSP and love a lot of the games for it. It is my most favorite handheld system out there, but I never saw the need to get the Vita. There just isn't any killer games on it that I'd be willing to cough up the coin to purchase one. I'm hard pressed to name any of the games...besides the new Lumines puzzle game.
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Friend of mine just picked up a vita brand new with an 8 gig card for $160 from a store going out of business. He has had it for a week and cant find any games that interest him. That seems to be the biggest problem next to the battery life.
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Yeah, I too am a big PSP person, it's my overall favorite portable, but the Vita, in the US, has nothing. When Ys Celceta is released stateside, that's a different story, I'd buy one for just that game, or really, anything from Falcom, but then again, I'm a bit nuts :dance: I do think Sony is being stubborn with price, it'll be sometime next year before they give in, as it's just too high for the market, especially next to the 3DS.
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There's no magic involved, the Vita needs two things: The correct price point, and some killer apps. Don't get me wrong, I think $250 is a good price for the technology, but is too expensive for a handheld for most people. It has a lot of good games, but it has little that can't be found elsewhere, and nothing that is a must-have.
It seems like companies forgot what sold the big selling systems in the past. THE GAMES.
I'm not planning on getting a Wii U at launch for the same reason. No killer app to make me spend the cash.
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I can't believe how badly CoD is f*cking up. I was really looking forward to that, and it's going to be a rushed piece of shit.
Uncharted and Gravity rush are ok though.
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There's no magic involved, the Vita needs two things: The correct price point, and some killer apps. Don't get me wrong, I think $250 is a good price for the technology, but is too expensive for a handheld for most people. It has a lot of good games, but it has little that can't be found elsewhere, and nothing that is a must-have.
See I don't understand why others think it's to expensive. People are willing to pay $400 or more for a new IPhone, Dorid, or whatever other overpriced smart phone so they can stay grandfathered in? Or, still pay $200 on top of the extra price for a "fixed"two year contract data plan. All for a phone.
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There's no magic involved, the Vita needs two things: The correct price point, and some killer apps. Don't get me wrong, I think $250 is a good price for the technology, but is too expensive for a handheld for most people. It has a lot of good games, but it has little that can't be found elsewhere, and nothing that is a must-have.
See I don't understand why others think it's to expensive. People are willing to pay $400 or more for a new IPhone, Dorid, or whatever other overpriced smart phone so they can stay grandfathered in? Or, still pay $200 on top of the extra price for a "fixed"two year contract data plan. All for a phone.
Depends on the phone, if it's a smartphone and the person isn't a hardcore gamer, it more than makes sense to get a phone that lets you game, communicate and tap into the web.
Like the article stated, hardcore gamers are a niche market today.
Now the price isn't too bad, I agree. The hardware is gorgeous, but I am on that same "there are no must have games" boat. I'm more and more leaning towards the 3DS XL - mainly for the Nintendo franchises and a few other exclusives.
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Yep, too pricey and not enough games. It's pretty sad when target/walmart/whatever has a better variety of PS2 games for sale than it has for the Vita.
The biggest problem with the Vita is that nobody asked for it. It's hard to fix that.
As opposed to the clamoring hordes screaming for the 3DS or the PSP or even the Wii? :roll:
See I don't understand why others think it's to expensive. People are willing to pay $400 or more for a new IPhone, Dorid, or whatever other overpriced smart phone so they can stay grandfathered in? Or, still pay $200 on top of the extra price for a "fixed"two year contract data plan. All for a phone.
Most people figure they're going to have a phone/data plan no matter what, so they don't factor that cost into the buy-in price (even if equal, cheaper options are available); and the Vita looks rather pricey at $50 more than the iPhone 5 and even pricier against a free iPhone 4.
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I like my Vita. I use all of the things it can do:
Smartphony3G shit
PSN to get other games that aren't available in stores (theres a neat RPG on there)
Gravity Rush and Wipeout
soon, Ragnarok Odyssey.
It's got a slow library start for sure though.
Which sorta sucks. I use mine right now to use the internet on the toilet at work.
like right now.
edIT: also to be fair, the 3DS has had a shitty start too. Most of the games are lame, save like 3 of them
and once just came out (Code of Princess).
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Like the article stated, hardcore gamers are a niche market today.
See, that's the thing. Even though they might no longer be in the majority, and although a lot has already been learned in the last 25 years from our dollar, you can't afford to ignore the hardcore gamer.
Sure, you can churn out farmville clones all day long, and at 60p I'm sure loads of people will buy them. And in the year 2025, madden and Fifa will be cranking out the nth revision of ostensibly the exact same game.
However, true innovation and polish tends to come from the hardcore area of the market, from early adopters, and people who actually read reviews, and are willing to stump up £50 for a new game upon release.
With both Android and iPhone burgeoning with probably millions of games, most of them clones of one another, your game will have to be original, lucky, and fun to make any significant money, and the margins will be stretched further in the future.
All I'm saying is, for the most part, there's little quality control in the casual market, and there doesn't have to be, because games cost f*ck all, and you're probably going to play it for less than an hour anyway. It stands to be seen if people learned their lesson from the Wii and its shovelware (I believe they probably have), but you can release something totally broken on a smartphone, and all you're gonna get is about $5 and a bad review now and again.
tl;dr, Hardcore has to exist as the top of the pyramid.
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alot of the "hardcore gamers" turned into fat lazy retards that try to justify their lack of gameplaying with stupid reasons like "jobs" and "families"
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alot of the "hardcore gamers" turned into fat lazy retards that try to justify their lack of gameplaying with stupid reasons like "jobs" and "families"
I hear ya. I've been meaning to get in a bit of Soldier Blade recently, but all I've managed to play is pinball and Dance Central. For shame. I need a week off :/
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alot of the "hardcore gamers" turned into fat lazy retards that try to justify their lack of gameplaying with stupid reasons like "jobs" and "families"
alot of the "hardcore gamers" turned into fat lazy retards that try to justify their lack of gameplaying with stupid reasons like "jobs" and "families"
Nailed it! :mrgreen:
(http://lh6.ggpht.com/_8fPpS39oWtM/TdRTYrmzfoI/AAAAAAAAE4k/ogBRagqjwO4/nail-head%5B4%5D.jpg)
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alot of the "hardcore gamers" turned into fat lazy retards that try to justify their lack of gameplaying with stupid reasons like "jobs" and "families"
Wow. That describes me to a "T".
Chris
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lol. whoops.
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I can rarely tell if you're joking.
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The biggest problem with the Vita is that nobody asked for it. It's hard to fix that.
As opposed to the clamoring hordes screaming for the 3DS or the PSP or even the Wii? :roll:
Its exactly like the PSP. That's the problem. The PSP was too much for people when it came out but Monster Hunter and Bandai along with a reduced price made it popular. This hasn't happened yet with the Vita, mostly because Bandai is still making regular PSP games! They even have a One Piece LE PSP coming out soon, which is really f*cking hilarious, IMO, and says a lot.
The Wii has always been popular, and always profitable, but this is because it has the motion control element that the hardcore a$$holes are always making stuck up jokes about. It was innovative. People wanted the innovation, or gimmick, or whatever you want to call it. They wanted it the second they saw it, and Nintendo made a profit on every Wii sold. The Vita does nothing whatsoever that something else doesn't do except for...rear touch? Wow. Rear touch. Blow my mind why don't you, Sony.
As for the 3DS...its true, people weren't really wanting 3D. They want it more now, but not really. People seem to pretty much always want the new Nintendo handheld for whatever reason though, and Pokemon sales ALONE are probably enough to outstrip every Vita game combined.
Which brings up an interesting point; backward compatibility. Nintendo is very good at this, historically. The two most recent Pokemon games were made as regular DS games instead of 3DS games, and the 3DS can still play them. Also, any DS made in the last 8 years can play them. This makes the hardware transition a lot easier, especially for parents. They can buy one copy of a game for two kids who have two different versions of DS in the same house. Sony is just too damned stupid to consider things like this. Sony seems to be on a mission to get you to throw out your regular PSP stuff while at the same time not giving you much new to play. The PSP Go for example...its single defining feature was that you had to buy all your same games again to use it. What a brilliant idea for a system!
Sony seems to built really powerful game hardware with no thought to the future. A huge problem with the PS2, PS3, and the PSP was...what do you do if it actually catches on? If you are losing $80 every time someone buys a system you are only going to break even when they by 4 or 5 full price retail games, which make take years, or never. How do you de-content and price down something as complex as a PS3? It would be nice if the Vita had a UMD drive in it, but obviously this is impossible because it would jack the price up even further...but seriously, that's something they should have thought of when they make the PSP in the first place. Nintendo has no problem fitting a DS slot into its last SIX hardware iterations, and a GBA slot on the first two DS versions.
With all of their target customers spending $100 on cel phone bills every month and buying a new smartphone every other year for $200 that's taking money out of the handheld gaming world. You can't just go and pretend that this isn't the case...but that's exactly what Sony seems to be doing. OK, so the Vita is really powerful, but that's a curse as well as a blessing. The same problem was the case with the PSP. In order to develop an impressive PSP/Vita game you have to spend Metal Gear Solid levels of money while pricing the game for less than a console game and selling fewer copies. How the f*ck is that supposed to work when even popular 1st tier console games are hauling in smaller and smaller margins every year?
Honestly, they should have just gone and made the first cell phone with decent gaming controls and went with that. Its kind of too late now. Sony in general is f*cked. The Walkman line is close to dead (which is %90 their fault), they don't have a lock on TVs anymore. They are third in the console wars and still make less money off each system than the first two places. They are a hilariously distant 2nd in the handheld market with no sign of looking up. This company has been HUGELY mismanaged and way too confident.
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Nintendo is a toy company, Sony didn't know what it was. Rather Sony had too many heads/departments all doing their own thing. Another reason why they lost the digital content "wars" Apple beat them to it. Anyway, I think the PS2 was extremely successful. Obviously the PS3, not so much..
Anyway, Zeta, I agree with the majority of your post.
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On a somewhat related note, Nintendo was wise to think about this question: How can we make the 3DS a console that people will want to take with them everywhere?
Think about it: we always have our phones on us, which is why the iPhone and Android platforms make for such good gaming platforms (not talking about controls, here). But Nintendo added in the Street/Spotpass functionality, the coins you can earn by simply walking around with the damn thing, and the collectibles that come with all that stuff. Sure, it's mostly fluff. But it's at least an effort to get people to lug another device around along with their smartphones. Mine's in my bag almost all the time for that reason alone.
Like Zeta said, Sony doesn't seem to have thought of any of that sort of thing. Rather, we've got another home console shrunk down into a rather bulky portable...with rear touch. I would love to own one, don't get me wrong, but there's really nothing there that's too compelling at that price.
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Sony seems to be on a mission to get you to throw out your regular PSP stuff while at the same time not giving you much new to play. The PSP Go for example...its single defining feature was that you had to buy all your same games again to use it. What a brilliant idea for a system!
The Go was never intended to replace the PSP, but was meant to be sold along side it. Sony's plan was to cash in on people that would never buy a regular PSP due to its size, weight, and relatively cumbersome and fragile UMD drive; a plan which failed because those people weren't going to buy and haul around another machine anyway.
Honestly, they should have just gone and made the first cell phone with decent gaming controls and went with that. Its kind of too late now.
Like the Xperia Play? That sold like hotcakes, right?
Like Zeta said, Sony doesn't seem to have thought of any of that sort of thing.
I'm not gonna say they're good ideas or work great, but Sony did hit on the social interaction bit with Near and Facebook tools.
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My logic might very well be flawed, but the results speak for themselves.
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The Xperia suffered from lack of software titles, the phone it self proved to be pretty damn fun from my understanding; and folks that use it for emu absolutely love it. Sony needs a page from the old Apple and trim some shit down or focus better.
Now, I clearly remember a monster hunter HD and Vita video awhile back, what happened to that?
Is Phantasy Star coming to the Vita?
I really want to like the Vita, and I love the hardware design, but man...nothing grabs me.
Now, bring on a Monster Hunter package come Xmas and then we might be unto something.
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I will buy it for a (non-OG) Super Robot Wars game.
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Legend of Heroes: Zero no Kiseki Evolution just came out yesterday in Japan and I spent all of last night playing it. I like it a lot. Basically it is an upgrade of the PSP version where they got voice actors to do all of the story parts, remixed the music, and upped the resolution of the graphics (of course). Not sure if it will warrant a purchase for people who already played through the game on PSP, but personally I'm really glad I never played very far into the PSP version and waited for the Vita remake instead. The amount and quality of voices in the Vita version is amazing, and for me this really makes the story sooo much more palatable since I often become bored with walls of text. Also, the remixed music is way above my expectations. Actually, I had originally wondered why they bothered remixing the music at all, but it turns out they really outdid themselves this time. With real instruments in almost all the tracks, the obvious upgrade in quality really ups the enjoyment factor for me. I think I will even bother collecting all the soundtrack CDs this time.
(Sorry. I just wanted to post my thoughts on this game and didn't think it necessarily warranted a whole new thread.)
More generally on the Vita: Ys is also, great, Uncharted was way above my expectations, and I will play Assassin's Creed when it comes out in a couple weeks even if the Vita version sucks, so personally I'm pretty happy with the library right now. But, I'm pretty disappointed with the system technically. Unlike the smartphones and tablets, this is a dedicated gaming system, so one of the selling points should be sheer graphical power to make games which are technically superior to those on phones/tablets and the 3DS. Unfortunately, I am finding it a bit lacking in the graphics department. The system's max resolution is 544p, which looks fine on the Vita's screen and technically the system should be able to handle this resolution with little trouble, but for some reason the majority of games so far are running at a lower resolution. This is not a nitpicky tech guy kind of complaint here. This is causing serious jaggies that any gamer - no matter how casual - is going to notice. The system already has so many things going against it, the last thing it needs is to be failing to accomplish its main selling point: to offer the best possible graphics experience on any portable device currently available. If it can't do that, then the system really doesn't have any edge over the competition.
Of course, as all of you pointed out, all of the above points are meaningless without killer apps to sell the system. I'm just making the point that this isn't even the only problem the system faces.
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This company has been HUGELY mismanaged and way too confident.
Agree 100%. They need to break this Company up, right now it isn't working.
On a somewhat related note, Nintendo was wise to think about this question: How can we make the 3DS a console that people will want to take with them everywhere?
I am a big Spot Pass fan. I make sure to put the 3DS in my pocket every time I go to the mall. Going to a gaming convention with a 3DS is an extra special treat.
The Vita has something called Near, which I think is supposed to be a Spot Pass rip off? I am not sure, because I don't think anyone within 100 miles of me has a Vita, so I have never seen it in action.
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Obviously I'd love to see Zero no Kiseki come outside of japan, that would be another game that'd get me to buy a Vita now! I don't know how long it'll be before we get it, if ever. I doubt it could be purchased by Atlus or someone to be released as a stand alone game since it's part of the same universe as the Trails in the Sky games, though, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it doesn't contain a mountain of spoilers that might ruin the story somehow?
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Here's something I've been thinking about for some time now, and I'm sure some people at Sony have thought the same thing, correct or not.
In the late 90s Sony pretty much owned portable music. There were a lot of cheap competitors, but their medium and high end Walkman lines were THE SHIT. People get really excited about the build quality of the iPhone 4 and 5, and they should, its probably the single nicest thing most of those people own (unless they also collect Rolex watches, Rolls Royce cars, Transrotor turntables, etc) but before Apple stuff was that nice, before...probably the iPod Mini is where it started, Sony totally owned that shit. Their high end Discmans were incredible, and their portable MD units were even nicer. The MZ-E45, the MZ-E10...dang that shit was nice. Recently iOS6 borked the sound on my iPhone 4 so I've had to result to using my MZ-R90 portable MD recorder. I hadn't powered it up in at least a year, and dang, I fell in love all over again. Its so...cool. Its just a cool piece of gear, period.
Check out the Sony Qualia-017:
(http://www.minidisc.org/images/sony_qualia_017.jpg)
Machined from a solid brass billet and nickel plated. So dang nice. I’ve known several industrial designers who went to school in the 90s and I’m telling you, Sony was considered Shangri La of places to work at just out of college. Now...dang, while I was a big Sony fan from the Walkman 2 to the D-25 to the MZ-N10...but now...I can hardly remember what any of their non-Playstation products from the last decade even look like. They are basically nothing.
The problem was that while Sony pretty much owned the portable music market in Asia and Europe (with American's only slightly digging the format in the big cities while most preferred $40 POS CD players and 64MB Diamond Rio MP3 players) the annoying aspects of Sony ownership were really nagging people. Because of this, as soon as the iPod got as small and cheap as MD, everyone jumped ship.
The annoying aspects of Sony ownership:
Needing a different AC adaptor for virtually every unit purchased: Much ado has been made of Apple ditching the Dock connector they've had since about 9 years ago. I've got mixed feelings about that but Sony changed the AC adaptor EVERY f*ckING TIME they made something, even if the battery was the same. Total bullshit. They'd change the size of the plug, or the polarity, or the voltages went up or down .3 volts, something. Total bullshit.
Reliability: Sony's of the 80s were pretty tough. Sony's of the 90s...not so much. The ultra slick looking stuff was usually even less durable.
Proprietary this and that: my girlfriend had a Discman with a unique headphone jack. Yes, a proprietary version of something that's been standard for decades on every Walkman or Walkman-like device. Considering the quality of Sony headphones (terrible) this was unforgivable.
Stupid firewalls: this...this is the big one.
Because Sony owned a record label, they got really protective of copying things. This is going to be an issue with something like MD since virtually nobody ever bought retail pre-recorded MDs.
First, there was Serial Copyright Management. This meant that anything recorded from a digital source set a flag preventing the copy from ever being recorded digitally.
Then when NetMD was introduced, which allowed for USB transfer of music from a computer to an MD recorder, they required that you use their software (which was SHIT) and it couldn’t upload meaning that if you recorded something in the field it had to be recored onto your computer in another way (either analog, or via a home MD deck with digital out). NetMD could only make USB copies from the computer to the MD recorder. It still recorded shit in real time (unless you used the horrible MDLP formats) and still transcoded it to ATRAC format.
By the time time HiMD came out they fixed basically all of this. HiMDs held 1GB! They could play ATRAC, MP3, or even PCM meaning that you could put uncompressed CD quality sound on them! They were high speed! You could upload or download unrestricted as well as still record from PCM and analog sources (something that still kind of sucks ass on Apple stuff). You could even store shit on there that wasn’t even music! But...by then it was too late. Apple had taken almost all of their business from them.
Now, lets say, if their own short sited greed hadn’t killed MD and ended up giving basically their entire market to Apple (who at the time just made iPods and niche computers), where would things be?
And what if the PSP used HiMD, like it damned well should of?
Well, obviously everything would be solid state by now in 2012. Sony wouldn’t be using MDs anymore just as Apple no longer puts tiny hard drives in their iPods. But what if Sony had managed to keep that margin?
One of the reason’s Apple’s phones have become nicer and nicer over the years is because they have so much market share. The processes they use to make the stuff are not cheap. The only reason they can do it is because they sell so many f*cking units. If they were only moving as many phones as Sony is there is no way they’d be able to profit from phones that are literally made one at a time on huge banks of rapid prototyping machines as the iPhone 4 was. This is kind of a vicious circle, unfortunately. The less you sell the larger your margins need to be so you cheapen the phone leading to it being less popular and then less people buying it and on and on. Recently a co-worker of mine bought whatever the new Samsung is and was showing me its features. Its pretty powerful for sure! It can actually run video in a window while you do something else, which my iPhone sure as hell can’t do. The case though...jeez...we measured it and it was as thick as my iPhone 4 to within .1mm, plus is has beveled edges and a removable battery cover which basically...leads to it feeling like a cheap creaky POS by comparison. Compared to the iPhone 4 its like the difference between chocolate and shit (they look the same from a a distance, but one you get them close to your face its pretty easy to tell the difference).
But what if Sony hadn’t shot themselves right in the f*cking foot? What if MD lived on as HiUMD, a format common to the PSP (which still lives, keep in mind, even with the least Universal disc format ever) and Walkman? Apple might not even have half the portable music market instead of %90. Sony phones would be solid metal masterpieces and the PSP...well, the PSP would probably still be cheap-ish but better, and the Vita would be a solid state solid brass pinnacle of industrial design.
The iPad and the million clones of the iPad probably wouldn’t even exist since it was birthed from an irrational love of iOS. With Sony owning half the market people would be too interested in actual product diversity to lust after what is essentially just a giant-ass iPod Touch.
They really really f*cked up.
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Man, what a post ^ I agree on some points though :) Let's use MiniDisc as an example. I just got into MDs and while I have no super expensive player, I dig it. My point though?
I mostly use my 90s Sharp MD recorder as my nice 2000-ish Sony NetMD has a bad screen, can't change the battery -which is pretty dead now - (only remove it if I were to throw it away) and can only do sync recording with optical sources and overall feels flimsy whereas my Sharp is a tad bigger, but it probably has the most solid build quality (outer case, anyway) out of any audio equipment I own. (My Sony mp3 player comes second, perhaps)
I could bludgeon someone with this and still use it afterwards. The screen is not backlit on the main unit, but it's still very easy to read, even in low light conditions. Oh, and it can "sync record" from both optical and analog sources, i.e. it starts recording when there's a sound coming. I might prefer the sound from the Sony though.
I believe I feel a bit the same way about the PSP & Vita. Now, I really like my PSP. But then I got into PSP gaming kinda late, when I could get games & hardware for low prices. To some extent, I've always done this for the systems I've bought myself and will most likely do the same with the Vita and possibly 3DS.
The PSP feels a bit...flimsy. I can sort of feel the plastic move and hear it creak when I use it, UMD door is very thin and the black color sucks fingerprints from literary everywhere. I always wished for a second stick on the PSP, a proper analog stick and the Vita's got that. But it doesn't seem like the perfect unit I've hoped for. I love the XMB interface and the Vita looks...I don't know how to put it, like I'd be afraid to use it because I don't want it to get scratched or broken. It doesn't look rugged enough.
Of course, games also factor in. A Monster Hunter game would make me want it more, but right now, I don't want to buy a Vita because I've got my eyes on so many other things. So, one problem, I guess, isn't that people doesn't want it, but they don't want it more than anything else? :-s
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What model is your Sony NetMD player? They nice ones were pretty great, the cheap ones though...they ones they were selling for $99 at Target...those were pretty shit. They had a big bulge in the back since they only took AAs, and the low end ones could ONLY record via NetMD which makes them useless for me.
My MZ-R90 is very solid, being the top of the line in 1999. The entire exterior is metal except for the battery door...which is kind of super flimsy if you aren't careful. It only does true synchro record from digital sources but it does a pretty great job of automatically detecting the ending and beginning of songs from analog. I rarely made analog MDs though.
(http://www.minidisc.org/images/sony_mzr90_2.jpg)
BTW, I literally bought a new Sony battery for this player two weeks ago, for $25, and its probably the same as yours. You just have to look around. I doubt I'll find another one in 10 years though when this one is junk.
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Which brings up an interesting point; backward compatibility. Nintendo is very good at this, historically. The two most recent Pokemon games were made as regular DS games instead of 3DS games, and the 3DS can still play them. Also, any DS made in the last 8 years can play them. This makes the hardware transition a lot easier, especially for parents. They can buy one copy of a game for two kids who have two different versions of DS in the same house. Sony is just too damned stupid to consider things like this. Sony seems to be on a mission to get you to throw out your regular PSP stuff while at the same time not giving you much new to play. The PSP Go for example...its single defining feature was that you had to buy all your same games again to use it. What a brilliant idea for a system!
Yeah. I'm sure I'm not in the minority here, but the PSP Go was an absolute joke.
Honestly, they should have just gone and made the first cell phone with decent gaming controls and went with that. Its kind of too late now.
Like the Xperia Play? That sold like hotcakes, right?
The Xperia play was a piece of shit. Hardly qualifies as decent controls.
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My Sharp (http://www.minidisc.org/part_Sharp_MD-MT831+MT832.html) - Battery still holds a decent charge actually.
My Sony (http://www.minidisc.org/part_Sony_MZ-N10.html) - Backlight is truly horrible and the remote, while nice, is hard to use without looking at it. Also mine acts up : /
BTW, I literally bought a new Sony battery for this player two weeks ago, for $25, and its probably the same as yours. You just have to look around. I doubt I'll find another one in 10 years though when this one is junk.
Oh yes, finding batteries for most players/recorders seems possible and not very expensive. Problem with this one is that it doesn't seem to be made to actually be switched out. You can remove it, but it got wires and stuff like...attached to it. To get to the battery you have to use a screwdriver and semi-remove the part of the player with the display & jog wheel since it sits under there.
I got the instruction manual with the player (very helpful as there is a ton of menus & sub menus and options) and the manual doesn't mentioning switching battery, only how to properly dispose of it when throwing your player away : / Can also only be charged in the cradle. Stupid.
I know there are better Sony players, new and old out there, and I'd love to have one of those HiMD ones...
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.... Apple no longer puts tiny hard drives in their iPods....
They actually keep making the old, big iPods with little 1.6" HDDs inside. I guess there's enough people out there that just gotta take a couple thousand albums with 'em everywhere they go.
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I used to obsess over minidisc players. I had 4 different ones over the years (one my friend actually dropped in a bin - at least he paid me back. It had 36 chambers in it too >__<)
I still have one, but it's all broken etc. And I still have blank discs and all my albums.
I remember once finding a really good album in a bar, someone had dropped it down the back of the seat. Good times.
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BTW, I literally bought a new Sony battery for this player two weeks ago, for $25, and its probably the same as yours. You just have to look around. I doubt I'll find another one in 10 years though when this one is junk.
Oh yes, finding batteries for most players/recorders seems possible and not very expensive. Problem with this one is that it doesn't seem to be made to actually be switched out. You can remove it, but it got wires and stuff like...attached to it. To get to the battery you have to use a screwdriver and semi-remove the part of the player with the display & jog wheel since it sits under there.
Oh yeah, that one is permanent. This is only true of a very small number of Sony MD players, maybe three of the most expensive. Most use the "gum stick" battery. With some gumption you could find something else to work in there, I'm sure. Does it have an external battery case?
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Oh yeah, that one is permanent. This is only true of a very small number of Sony MD players, maybe three of the most expensive. Most use the "gum stick" battery. With some gumption you could find something else to work in there, I'm sure. Does it have an external battery case?
Yes, it came with the external AA battery adapter thing :) But it's clumsy that way so I don't use it like that very often. I should give Sony another chance with another player another time...
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How to save the Vita? Well, the real question is... why bother? Let it die.
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I hope it lives because I have no interest in cell phone gaming (not in its current state anyhow) and because the 3DS has too much gimmick and not enough quality.
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I hope it lives because I have no interest in cell phone gaming (not in its current state anyhow) and because the 3DS has too much gimmick and not enough quality.
Yeah. Even this new Code of Princess 3DS game is annoying to an extent because there is some irritating slowdown in combat.
So far, everything I have played on the Vita has been acceptable. In terms of launch libraries, it pounds the 3DS, and it has some promise.
Also, the quality of the Vita in general is really nice. The screen is motherf*cking badass and a half.
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I think that whole "gimmick hate" argument, if you can even call it that, is starting to lose its steam. Anyone who can't find tons of fun on the DS is clearly just looking the other way. What exactly is a "gimmick" and why is it the opposite of quality? The touch screen was considered a gimmick when the DS was new. Now that we're at a point where nearly every single electronic device being made has a touch screen, is it still a gimmick? Are stereo speakers a gimmick? How about WiFi? Sometimes I think this shit just falls out of people's mouths like turds from the ass of a horse in a Labor Day parade; not a single thought given to them. Plop plop.
Which isn't to say I don't want the Vita to succeed. I do, but it's really just me not wanting the PSP style Bandai games to die off.
I don't have a lot of 3DS games so I still don't have a gauge of its power. I assume it can do something as good as Super Robot Wars Z2, which was on PSP and had some of the best 2D visuals in history, but I haven't seen proof of it yet. If the Vita can give us a better SRW (PSP SRWs were certainly better than DS ones) then I'd prefer them on Vita.
I do agree that cell phone gaming is the devil. Not inherently, but because the controls suck and it makes it hard for anyone charging more than $0.99 to sell anything. This cheapness is drifting over into software price expectations for other platforms now too, and that's not good one bit.
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I think what some mean by gimmic on the 3ds is "what does playing it in 3d really add to making the game fun or better to play?" Sure the 3DS can play DS games, but just like people are arguing about the Vita "I didn't buy a Vita to play PSP games"
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I think that whole "gimmick hate" argument, if you can even call it that, is starting to lose its steam. Anyone who can't find tons of fun on the DS is clearly just looking the other way.
Not once did I say there aren't any fun games on the DS (or 3DS and Wii either), but keep those thoughts a ploppin'.
What exactly is a "gimmick" and why is it the opposite of quality?
Look at how most of the best games on the Wii and DS only use motion control and the touchscreen (respectively) in tangential, inconsequential ways that add little (if anything) to the experience, or look at all the 3DS games where 3D is tacked on as an afterthought and not at all immersive. That's the definition of gimmick (duh). There are of course titles that utilize them to great effect, but those are in the minority.
And by quality I meant graphical quality, and there's no arguing that Nintendo doesn't care much about offering a competitive machine in terms of graphical abilities. Again, that says nothing about games being fun or not.
The touch screen was considered a gimmick when the DS was new. Now that we're at a point where nearly every single electronic device being made has a touch screen, is it still a gimmick?
In the context of a game system where it's nigh useless for anything other than some puzzle games or something like Scribblenauts, yes. That doesn't make it useless, tough - it's just not an integral, essential part of the experience.
Which isn't to say I don't want the Vita to succeed.
I think you'd be happier than a kid on Christmas morn for the great Nintendo to have the game market to themselves.
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Gimmicky stuff involves things like redefining input mechanics unnecessarily or adding concepts which are superfluous. When the original DS first came out, for example, I knew that it would bring with it a whole legion of gimmicky shit that people would buy up anyway because it'd be wrapped in the cloak of their favorite franchises. Using the stylus to control a character that is suited to a D-pad is gimmicky crap.
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I have yet to see any practical use for the rear touchpad, and I doubt I'll ever see one. The duel cameras are only useful if you're planning on using video chat or using the Vita as a video/still camera (why?). The game included in Welcome Park where you can take pictures of objects that look like faces and bring them to life is kinda fun to screw with, but I doubt we'll ever see a truly good use for either camera in a serious game.
I feel like the Vita is trying to be an all-in-one portable electronic device for communication, video, music, photos, etc. Of course, they have to put all that superfluous crap in there too, just because they can. Problem is, that's what EVERY other device is trying to be these days. And I'll bet that most who own Vitas already own 2 or 3 other devices that can do all of those things just as well. I can maybe see the use for the front touchscreen and motion sensor. Not the other features so much. The people who are going to buy Vitas are gamers who want something close to the PS3/360 experience in a portable device. That's what they should be focusing on - not trying to market it as another alternative to a smartphone, tablet, ipod, etc.
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I think you'd be happier than a kid on Christmas morn for the great Nintendo to have the game market to themselves.
Yeah, I know you are committed to the axiom that SignOfZeta loves the idea of a Nintendo monopoly despite the fact that there is zero evidence of it.
My handheld game collection consists of a lot of Gameboy/DS stuff for sure, but it also has two Wonderswans, two Neo Geo Pockets, and a PSP. In fact, with the PSP now dead in the US (as far as I can tell) I'm still importing the occasional PSP game from Japan to the tune of $85+ a piece. I sure must HATE Sony's machines, right? As for consoles, the single most expensive piece of software I've EVER purchased is the Macross: DYRL hybrid Bluray/PS3 game earlier this year which cost nearly $250 after shipping.
Mathematically speaking, I just did a count and only %52.9 of my handheld game collection is for Nintendo systems, which I'm sure is far far more diverse than your average gamer considering Nintendo ships probably %60-90 of all the handheld games made, depending on what year it is. I haven't counted my console games but I know for sure the Nintendo ratio isn't even close to that high. Most of my stuff is Sega and NEC.
Plop, plop.
I know you're comfortable with your head up your ass, tightly packed with your own baseless conventional wisdom, but it would probably benefit everyone if you pulled it out, at least once in a while, and took a look at the world around you before forming diamond hard unshakable opinions based on complete crap. I'm not the sort of person who is pro-monopoly in any marketplace. A lack of options benefits no one. Furthermore, while Nintendo always has the most popular handheld out there, its never the best, at least not at many things. When the PSP was still (fully) alive its amazing screen alone often times made it the go to choice for any game that was on both systems. I'm still pissed Space Invaders Extreme 2 never came out for PSP. I have both the DS and PSP versions of the first game and the PSP is by far my favorite.
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I think the problem with "gimmicks" is that often you really aren't given a choice but to force them upon users, as Rover says. The Vita has done alright so far IMO with offering up options to use different methods, even if some bits do seem tacked on.
Tacked on bits are the charcoal rubbings in Uncharted (though that's neat), and an example of open options is the accelerometer steering in Gravity rush, and aiming in uncharted. Both can be turned off - and need to be if you play on a bus >___>
But for instance, we all know how much Sony pushed 3D on the playstation, and with certain AAA franchise exceptions (ok and some wii ware), the Wii was pretty much limited to the nunchuck and Wiimote.
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Yeah, I know you are committed to the axiom that SignOfZeta loves the idea of a Nintendo monopoly despite the fact that there is zero evidence of it.
I based that on how quick you are to defend any criticism of Nintendo, how you oft complain of the evils of Microsoft, how you've said more than once that Sony products keep getting worse and worse (the latest being the Vita which nobody wants at all), and I don't think you really consider cell phones to be competition (competition for limited entertainment dollars but not specifically game console competition). I'm at least partially correct in that you'd prefer for MS to leave the gaming business all together and for Sony to completely change their business plan of complicated jack-of-all-trades machines, right?
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I defend Nintendo because they are very good at what they do. Anyone who can't see this is a retard. They also make more money at what they do. Their fiscal situation of course effects me not at all, but when ignorant hardcore gamer jackoffs say stuff like, "Why doesn't Nintendo do this?", or "I won't buy the machine unless it does this, so they better do it!" they need to understand that there is a reason they do things the way they do them. It isn't incompetence, not even slightly. Maybe you can get that shit you want on the 360 and the PS3, but keep in mind those machines make little to no money. Perhaps what gamers wan't is completely unsustainable, at least for now?
I slam Sony for getting worse and worse because this too is totally true. They f*cking OWNED EVERYTHING 15 years ago and now they have jack. Nintendo isn't even competing with in the same market as them, honestly, which means they lost the crown to...f*cking Mircosoft? How?
And I slam MS for all the same reasons people slammed MS before they got into gaming. They are a corrupt monopoly that leverages their might into every facet of every industry...and I say "every" industry because there isn't much going on in the world that MS doesn't have something to do with. When they got into game machines it really pissed me off since they bought out the last few Dreamcast projects to sell them to MS customers, most of whom couldn't give a shit less. These days, I have to be honest, MS is doing a LOT better at most of the stuff they do. They stopped doing stuff like putting out operating systems that were shit on purpose just to force an upgrade later (there is NO excuse for Windows Millennium, none) and the 360 is about 100x the system the original XB was. I still don't love them, but most of the anti-XB stuff I went on about was a long time ago.
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There are tons of sweet games on the DS
The 3DS on the otherhand, not so much (yet)
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Yeah, while I quite like my 3DSXL I can't say the software selection is amazing or even acceptable.
I don't think the 3D screen itself has anything to do with that at all though, it's the extra money needed to develop GameCube level graphics and sell the games at $40 or less. The actual 3D effect is pretty easy, in polygonal games its essentially free.
So far I have the Williams pinball collection (very fun, but not a system seller) Steel Diver (hugely underrated, IMO), NSMB2 (quality for sure, but really unoriginal, even for a Mario game, and the 3D is underwhelming and useless), and Pilotwings. I really really like Pilotwings. It makes effective use of the circle pad and the 3D.
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I have Kid Icarus and Code of Princess. They are both fun, as is Bust a Move, but its f*cking BUST A MOVE.
I just got it because I like Bust a Move.
The rest of the library is underwhelming. Star Fox 3DS is f*cking retard easy pussy shit. I was really mad at that stupid game with how you can close your eyes and win.
Rayman looks cool too, and plays nice
BUT ITS RAYMAN.
f*ck.
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I have Kid Icarus and Code of Princess.
Those two and the new Mario 3D spike my interest in the system, as well as the DS library. At least until better games come out.
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Mario 3D Land is the best game on the system, and I have played loads of 3DS before making this decision. If you have a 3DS and don't have Mario 3D Land, it is the game that should be on the top of your must buy list.
My favorite Vita game to date? Now that is where quality underwhelms. I might be tempted to say Resistance or Uncharted, even though I acknowledge both games are pretty average. I had a pretty good time with Blaz Blue too.
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I honestly can't fathom buying Bust a Move again.
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Bust a Move Again again even.
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This is just my opinion, but I think what the Vita really needs is some games that AREN'T slightly upgraded versions of PS3 games that we've already played years ago. Seriously, that category is AT LEAST half the library. :lol:
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This is just my opinion, but I think what the Vita really needs is some games that AREN'T slightly upgraded versions of PS3 games that we've already played years ago. Seriously, that category is AT LEAST half the library. :lol:
TBH, I don't own a PS3, so I wouldn't mind, but I know what you mean.
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I honestly can't fathom buying Bust a Move again.
I buy it whenever its released for anything basically.
and then I get home and play it on my neo geo cabinet and wonder why I bought it.
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and then I get home and play it on my neo geo cabinet and wonder why I bought it.
.....
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and then I get home and play it on my neo geo cabinet and wonder why I bought it.
.....
I meant, I wonder why I bought another iteration of Bust a Move since I have it on my Neo Geo.
I never wonder why I bought the Neo Geo
I bought that thing because it's f*cking badass, and came with 7 games!
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Saw the new trailer for the Persona 4 remake. Now I want a Vita...
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Wanting a Vita is all about software being released that you feel you must have. For me it was Falcom games that did it.
Of course, I would rather the games were just released on a home console instead. I'm not personally fond of playing on a small screen, or away from home.
It's the games I'm interested in, not the Vita system itself. If it weren't for the games, I'd have no interest in buying this piece of hardware at all. If there's anyone out there who bought it because the rear touchpanel and dual cameras gave them a hard-on, how their brain operates is beyond my comprehension.