February 10, 2012, 8:06 AM — Sony's new handheld gaming system, the Playstation Vita, officially launches on the 22nd of this month, but those of us who pre-ordered the "First Edition Bundle" should be getting theirs next Wednesday (the 15th of February). Things are really heating up for the Vita launch, in both good and bad ways.
Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first. First, in Japan Sony tried out something called the UMD Passport Service. This was a way for owners of Sony Playstation Portal titles on that system's UMD format to get digital copies of their games for the Vita (at a cost, but less than the cost of re-purchasing the titles). Sony has announced that they won't be bringing this program to North America and this announcement is causing much angst in various comment streams.
From what I can tell, the program was kind of a failure in Japan anyway. When it launched there were over 600 games available for the PSP but only 262 of them were covered by the program. Notable names like Capcom, Square Enix and Konami opted not to participate, so arguably the most popular games on the system, like Monster Hunter, weren't covered. Here's a post at Siliconera from last November talking about the situation.
Sony was in a no-win situation here. They're getting blasted for not bringing the program to North America, but if they brought it here they would've been blasted for not offering every title through the program. In my opinion it was a smart idea to get all the bile out now rather than have an unsatisfying program lingering on for months after the Vita launched. It would've been a smarter idea to make sure all the big publishers were on board with the program before ever announcing it, but that's water under the bridge.
Next up, discounts on digital copies of games. If you know where to look you can now find Vita games on the Playstation Store and they're generally priced 10% less than the MSRP of the physical copies. You'd think that would be good news, but nope...instead the anti-Sony contingent is out in force complaining that the discount isn't big enough. I'd be more sympathetic to these arguments if, generally speaking, digital copies of media were cheaper than physical copies, but that's just not true.
For instance, you can purchase Rise of the Planet of the Apes digitally for $19.99 ($14.99 for SD) from outlets like Vudu or Amazon.com streaming video. Or you can buy the 2-disk Blu-Ray combo version (includes a DVD copy) for that same $19.99. Granted that's the movie business, so let's look at an example from gaming. Log into your Xbox 360 and compare digital prices of full games to physical prices. For example, The First Templar is available on Xbox Games on Demand for $29.99. The physical version can be had from Amazon for $14.99! (I chose The First Templar since it's the most recent title available via Games on Demand, not because I recommend it to anyone.)
Point is, no one is lambasting 20th Century Fox or Microsoft over there being no discount (and sometimes a premium) for the digital versions of their products. Sony makes a policy of a 10% discount across the board and the hate comes rolling in.
Clearly Sony has a branding problem. People love to hate them these days no matter what they do.
Anyway for me, a 10% discount plus no sales tax plus immediate availability all mean I'll be going digital most of the time. If you prefer a physical copy then you're covered too. The price difference isn't much one way or another so you should probably buy the format you're comfortable with. If Sony was offering a 30% discount on digital versions then the angry mob would be screaming that it was Sony's way of 'punishing' gamers who refused to buy their overpriced and proprietary memory cards. The company can't win these days, but it could take a lot of the bite out of this arguing point by selling its memory cards at a price closer to that of non-proprietary cards.
Anyway let's leave the gloom and doom behind. I'm (as you can probably tell) not one of the haters and I'm pretty excited about getting my First Edition Bundle. Yesterday Sony posted an unboxing video on their blog. The case that comes in the bundle looks better than I'd hoped for, and the copy of Little Deviants is actually a physical copy (I was expecting a voucher for a downloadable copy), so you won't be using up some of the space on the included 4 GB memory card. I'm pretty happy with what we're getting in this bundle. We're saving about $20 over what the components would've cost individually and we get our Vita a week early.
In another post, Sony talked about how to get content onto your new Vita. You can download games directly from PSN or transfer them from a PS3 (or presumably a PC though they don't specify that option in their post). The post also includes a list of PSP games that are compatible with the Vita. There're 155 PSP titles and 117 Minis that will run on the Vita, but Sony says more will be available in the coming weeks.
For those of us who buy a new system to play new games, there are 26 Vita titles scheduled to be available on the 22nd. Gameranx has the full list.
So what looks good? Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Mod Nation Racers: Road Trip, along with my 'free' copy of Little Deviants, ought to be enough to keep me busy for a while.
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