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PS Vita western launch thread, p. 2 | Simply the most desirable handheld yet released

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legbone

Member
ok, it's time for my weekly asking of this question. has anyone tried pinball hall of fame gottlieb collection on their vita? it is not on the official bc list but i'm just curious if anyone has tried to transfer it from the ps3. carry on.
 
I noticed tonight on Super Stardust Delta 'live area' page - the icon to start says 'Trial' even though i bought (and it is) the full version.
Anyone elses? Don't recall seeing it say Trial the other day either!
 

Pachimari

Member
I still think it's weird that it have now been a week since PlanetAxel withdrew money from me for a 32GB and it still hasn't been shipped. They even have it listed as "available" on their site with a "ships in 0-3 days". Gotta write them one more mail tomorrow.
 

mattiewheels

And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
For people interested, wololo revealed which game can be exploited to run homebrew through. It's not available on the US store, though. Since I don't want to use a EU account, and don't feel like spending $60 for it on the JP store, I think I'll pass.
 

DBT85

Member
I am extremely irritated at the USB charging limitations.

Especially since they seem trivial and arbitrary.

At least there are already mods surfacing:
http://www.dannychoo.com/post/en/26419/PS+Vita+USB+Mod.html

And that guy didn't even really know what he was doing. But he got it to charge from a portable battery.

I hope 3rd parties make new Vita data/charge cables that remove this stupid limitation, as I'd like to use my Brunton Restore that I already own to recharge the Vita when I'm out of the country or away from wall outlets for extended trips.

EDIT - this solution is much better
http://www.snapturtle.com/wp/2012/02/22/ps-vita-usb-charging-solved/

If you order this can you tell me if it works with the Vita using the Trent, I'd rather not do the mod tbh, my soldering skills are not great.

Thanks for this! I've been looking for alternative methods to charge my Vita. Sony got everything right with this device except the atrocious power cord and limited charging options.

I'll take one for the team and also try the power switching adapter from Amazon - thanks to DBT85.

USB CHARGING SUCCESS

For all those wanting to charge via USB while the system is on, I can confirm that this item from amazon.co.uk with the data pin modification as shown in the first quote will enable you to charge via USB.

The second option of this small adapter I cannot yet test as it has not arrived.

I have not yet soldered the two data pins together, I'll get one of the engineers at work to do that tomorrow. However for now I cut the Green and White wires (two central pins) and just tied them together to see if it works. Sure enough, in both standby and WHILE ON, the Vita is charging from my New Trent IMP 1000 11.1Ah battery.

USBmod1.jpg

USBmod2.jpg

Needless to say I am very happy with this solution as it means whenever I am out I'll ALWAYS have enough battery on me for 20+ hours without going near a mains socket. Plus that battery charges my phone and other devices.

I'll report back on the other adapter when it arrives, not expecting it before Monday though.
 
Alright... So I got in touch with someone from Sony UK on the EU Official Forums and he told me that he could get any valuable feedback to the RIGHT people: the team responsible for the Vita's OS / firmware.

This is the list I sent him. Let's hope it helps:

-----------------------------------
Urgent feedback and suggestions (things that mess with the user experience):
-----------------------------------

Notifications

Notifications do not work very well (yet), and it seems it will only keep you signed in into PSN when you're either in a game or in an active party. If you do something else, you will see the 'Signing in' pop-up when you try to go back to your Friends List.

What I expected it to do (especially with the 3G version, which I have), is keep you signed in all the time (using push notifications and a proxy, much like apps like eBuddy/WhatsApp etc) and constantly inform you of Near activity, notify you about invites/messages when the Vita is in standby.

Suggestion:
  • Use push-notifications and a proxy to keep users signed in into the PSN even while idle (and standby), or at least include it as an option so you can choose if you want this just on Wifi or both Wifi and 3G. I understand that this was designed to save your battery, but when I'm at home - using my Wifi and with my charger stand by, I just want the option to be online all the time like on my PS3.

The main thing here, is that it's annoying to get game invites or messages 15 minutes later than they were sent.

  • Currently, if a user 'likes' / 'thumbs up' or comments on something that happened in the Near / game-specific activity feeds, no one receives any notification of that event. There's no use of commenting on a status-update if no one knows about it...

Online gaming
  • Right now, you can't quickly invite someone to your party or check the time when you're waiting in a game lobby, because when you press the PS Button, the game instantly disconnects you! Please change this.
  • Some games seem to FORCE your connection to be in an 'offline' state. Is this because those games were in development long before the Vita's hardware / OS were finalized, or is there another reason? Because I strongly advice to NOT do this for future games, as the (long awaited) cross-game Party Chat-app has no use if games keep forcing you to sign off the PlayStation Network and go offline.

User Interface
  • Enable an option to skip the 'Live Area' screen of the social apps, so you don't have to keep touching 'Start' after selecting Party, Friends or Group Messages. I understand things like 'documentation' and a quick 'link' to 'compose message' and such are on those screens, but they can also be accessed within the 'app' by pressing the PS-button afterwards). Forcing users to press a button twice to get to where they want will get them annoyed. And right now, the Vita's UI becomes cumbersome to use after some time.
  • When you get notifications, you can't touch the bubble. You have to press the PS-button and then touch the upper right corner, touch the notification again etc. Basically, this sucks. It should just go to the notification list when I touch the notification bubble, or at least open the list when I press the PS-button while the notification is still active.
  • Add a 3G/Wifi switch to the quick settings screen (accessed by holding the PS button - the screen where you also adjust the brightness).
  • Add / Enable PORTRAIT VIEW when I tilt my screen in the browser.

  • Finally, there's the IN YOUR FACE pop-ups that keep informing me about things I don't care about. They only make the UI feel slow. I'm talking about the 'Please wait...' and 'Signing into the PlayStation Network' or 'Sending message - 22% of 100%' pop-ups.
  • Come on! Just show me the cached version of the latest state the app was in, and refresh/reconnect in the background. Same goes for Trophies, or Sending messages...}
  • When I send a message, just let me continue with what I was doing and send it in the background. Then, when it's sent, notify me with the more subtle notifications that are also being used for Trophies/Online Friends/Messages received and such.

-----------------------------------
Additional feedback and ideas:
-----------------------------------

Activity Stream

Right now, we have this lovely stream of all the stuff your friends are doing (you can see the entire stream in 'Near', but you can also filter it by scrolling down a game's Live Area-screen), which is great, but very messy.

  • You can comment on stuff and like it, but as far as I know, no one will get notified about comments/likes, so why even bother?
  • Everything is being pushed into the stream unbundled. If High Score-updates would merge and only show the highest score, and Trophy-updates would be combined (so that you can expand the update to see all collected trophies), the feature would be much better in my opinion.

But that's not all. Because the stream is a great addition, but it has so much more potential as a whole:

General Leaderboards

Currently, there's no way to filter the stream for 'highest score', so that you can easily see what your friends best scores are. Yes, some games support it internally, but not all games.

The best example here, is Welcome Park: The app has some fun games, which are great to get some competition going among friends. But there's no way to keep up to date with the latest scores, unless you go digging in the (very long and ever growing) stream...

If the Vita would have General Leaderboards for ALL games (which need to be supported by all developers), we could all just check out Friends and Universal High Scores within the Vita's OS!
Wouldn't that be something?

This would also allow for even more competitive fun, such as:

Integrated Challenges
In addition to the General Leaderboards, I think a 'Challenge'-system within games could prove to be very fun. Example:

You just scored an amazing high score and think: I bet my friends can never beat that!

Well... what if the game would ask you to send you score as a challenge to one or more friends?

Here's how it could work:

  • Tap or Select the 'Send Challenge' button
  • Select the Friend(s) you would like to challenge
  • Press Send

That's it!

Now, in order for this to work, your Friends need to be notified about their incoming Challenges... So I suggest an integration with the current Notifications:

High Score-notifications:

So I just send you a Challenge...

PING!

"Caemgen has challenged you to beat his High Score of 223.442 in Super Stardust Delta's Arcade Mode (Medium difficulty)" - Accept Challenge?

You press 'Accept' and the Vita asks if you would like to start the game right away, or save the challenge for later. You decide to go for it straight away and press 'Accept'.

PING!
I get notified about you accepting my challenge.

PING!

I get notified about you beating my high score and you send me a new challenge right away.

-----------------------------------

The above scenario is one of the things that could be done with this functionality. Another thing that would a great addition is the option to enable notifications for whenever a friend beats on of your high scores in ANY game.

Filtering notifications

Additionally, it would be nice to filter out some of these notifications (or disable them all together, if you're not into competitive gaming at all, or have no friends to play games with).

  • Disable notifications for a specific game
  • Maximize notifications to bundled alerts hourly
  • Disable all notifications (you could still be able to check the Global Leaderboards and select the 'Challenges' tab to see whatever Challenges and notifications are currently open).

He just PM'ed me that he forwarded the list to them, as he thought it was great feedback. ^.^
 

SmokyDave

Member
For people interested, wololo revealed which game can be exploited to run homebrew through. It's not available on the US store, though. Since I don't want to use a EU account, and don't feel like spending $60 for it on the JP store, I think I'll pass.

How gutting for the now defunct bigBIG if that drives sales for the game.

Still, it's a title that every PSP owner really ought to have.
 

Gunpriest

Neo Member
Thrustmaster VIP case finally shipped! And for a much lower price of £12.99 on Amazon, so hopefully thats just price matching and not indicative of quality. My portable system can finally be portable!

Now if only I could track down one of those PS Vita Wallets that were pre-order bonuses in the rest of the EU. Other than one insane ebay scalper, they're nowhere to be found...?!

Looks nice, but no extra places for game cards as far as i can see. I got the EVA case from Kamikaze. I like it, except for those straps. It did cost me only 9€, so not big deal if i find a better case later on. Going to put the VIP case on my wishlist :)
 
The only people shitting on the Vita in this thread are the usual know it alls that don't actually have one.

If you read posts from people who own them, they are happy, not exactly anecdotal is it? There's no point sitting in the middle of a happy thread of owners crying like a bitch about something you don't have, just make a decision, stick to it and stop fucking banging on about it.

Please learn to read.

I have nothing more to say.
 

DBT85

Member

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Looks nice, but no extra places for game cards as far as i can see. I got the EVA case from Kamikaze. I like it, except for those straps. It did cost me only 9€, so not big deal if i find a better case later on. Going to put the VIP case on my wishlist :)

Thats why I've been on the hunt for this:


The perfect solution and I can't find it anywhere :( Dear Sony, I would like to give you money, would you like some? If any European GAF'r can nab me one, i will love you. forever.
 

Pachimari

Member
Actually decided to just write PlanetAxel an email.

Anyway, just received my vouchers for Escape Plan, Super StarDust Delta, Top Darts, Hustle King's and Unit 13 - wish they would just deliver that 32GB memory card.
 

Maedhros

Member
Alright... So I got in touch with someone from Sony UK on the EU Official Forums and he told me that he could get any valuable feedback to the RIGHT people: the team responsible for the Vita's OS / firmware.

This is the list I sent him. Let's hope it helps:



He just PM'ed me that he forwarded the list to them, as he thought it was great feedback. ^.^

That's really nice. Hope to see them coming true in the future.
 
My colleage just achieved a world ranking of six on the third time trial of MotorStorm RC, on my Vita (nick: MaimTron9000), sick and wrong. This game is awesome.
 

Kafel

Banned
Thats why I've been on the hunt for this:



The perfect solution and I can't find it anywhere :( Dear Sony, I would like to give you money, would you like some? If any European GAF'r can nab me one, i will love you. forever.

I can get you one, it costs 30 € though iirc.
 
Does anybody know when the "Diablo-clone", i think its called Rune or something, with PS3 <> PSVita savegame transition will be released? Haven't read anything about it in the last weeks.
 
I haven't played either of the PSP God of War games (any God of War game, actually)... just wondering how they feel on the Vita? I've heard nothing but good things about the series, think these are a good place to jump in?
I put God of War: Ghost of Sparta on my Vita just to see how it looked, and once I started playing it I had to play it all the way through to the end. It looked absolutely beautiful on the Vita and played wonderfully. Also, Chains of Olympus is a great place to "jump in" to the series, as I believe it is the first of the games chronologically (it was a prequel to the PS2/3 games)...

I'm playing The 3rd Birthday now, and what an improvement it is playing that on the Vita with the second stick for the camera. The camera's still a little jerky, but the game does look fantastic and plays very well...

I wish Resistance: Retribution was on back on PSN and Vita-compatible... I'd love to play through that again using the DS3 controls built into the game...
 
Just making sure,

I can download Metal Gear: Peace Walker on my PS3 and download it to the Vita directly. Nothing else needed? I may be wrong but I looked on the PS store and didn't see it in the compatibility list although the list looked bigger than what is currently offered on the Vita's store.
That's what I did. I've got Peace Walker on my Vita now. It works fine...
 

legbone

Member
Does anybody know when the "Diablo-clone", i think its called Rune or something, with PS3 <> PSVita savegame transition will be released? Haven't read anything about it in the last weeks.

i'm not sure of the release date but it's called warrior's lair now. sometime later this year is all that has really been stated as far as i know.
 
Hey this has probably been brought up already but anyone play
Parasite Eve 3 on the Vita?

I always wanted to get it on PSP but wasn't sure if it turned out to be a great game or mediocre one.
You mean The 3rd Birthday, I presume? Yes, I'm playing it now on my Vita (started yesterday) and it's quite a bit nicer than playing on the PSP. Mapping the second stick to the D-Pad for camera control improves the playability a bit, and the graphics look very, very good. I think it's well worth the $20 PSN price, and I double dipped for it (I've got it on UMD as well).
 

kuroshiki

Member
Sorry if this has been asked...I've seen that this is the best screen protector, right?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006VE40JQ/?tag=neogaf0e-20

What case have you guys decided is the best (and reasonably affordable)?

And has there been any announcement about adding PSOne support recently?

I'm using that protector and it's actually awesome.

The only problem is I don't like how instruction manual was written.

Also I bought face cover from HORI and will delivered tomorrow.
 

Joe Molotov

Member
Is there a list of PS Minis that work on the Vita but aren't listed? I wanted Age of Zombies and Pac-Man Championship, but they're not in the store, but then I read somewhere that they did work.
 
I can't believe how dumb people are so they have to be told that a save game needs to be erased in order to earn trophies. Of course you won't earn trophies on a save that isn't yours.

But Isn't the save data saved on your system, thus the need for a memory card. What would you have to wipe out on the actual game card.
 
Is there a list of PS Minis that work on the Vita but aren't listed? I wanted Age of Zombies and Pac-Man Championship, but they're not in the store, but then I read somewhere that they did work.
I have both listed as incompatible. If you do find a way to make them run on a Vita, please let me know so I can update the OP.
 

Kacho

Gold Member
I gotta say, the PlaySation Vita carrying case is pretty poorly designed. Can you return opened accessories at Gamestop?

I downloaded Monster Hunter Freedom Unite to my Vita last night and I was SO excited to map the camera to the right analog stick. Even after doing that I STILL use the claw out of habit. I wonder if I'll ever be able to retrain myself not to do that.
 
Just wanted to thank GAF for the feedback regarding Rayman. You guys were not BSing about how great it looks This game is very beautiful. Never played a Rayman game before, but I am glad I got it.
Ya, I gotta echo these sentiments... I was sure I didn't want to bother with Rayman - the last Rayman game I played was on my Sega CD and my impression back then was that it was a pretty but dull floaty platformer (then I'd go back to playing Sewer Shark in all its pixely-FMV glory!!) so I just wasn't interested... but the praise the Vita version has received here on GAF convinced me to try the demo yesterday, and I immediately went out and bought the game. It is beautiful! And fun! Between it, Prinny and Tales From Space: MBA I'm well served for platformers at the moment on my Vita...
 
I don't see how it's a workaround or a "loophole" as other sites were saying. Doesn't it specifically tell you when you put a pre-owned cartridge in that you need to delete all the data in order to earn trophies?

It only tells you that on some regions, which is really weird. In others it tells you only the original buyer can get trophies and to link your account to that one. Which is of course terrible advice and the start of all this rumors about a conspiracy to stop used game sales.
 
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