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Some new shots of Vita's OS/apps

ZeroRay

Member
Looks like feature wise, it's either really close to, or equals the 360 feature set. Might even exceed it when it's released.

Don't really care much for the UI though.
 
Takao said:
Then you should know of the bloat the XMB is now. To get to the wireless settings from playing a game it takes 16 clicks. While that's not terrible, it's very unfriendly, and almost intimidating to have all these things show up.

I have about 40 games on my Go. I haven't seen some of the ones on the bottom in months.

Yeah, that´s one of the problems, kinda messy sometimes, but nothing that cannot be fixed rearranging some of the less used options.
 
Thoraxes said:
It's well animated, but other than that it looks too cluttered and confusing, especially when i'm just going to want to play games on it.
Wish there was a way (or will be) to turn everything else off that I don't need.

I don't think you will have to worry about that because the way I see it if you only intend to just playing a game and you don't have any apps running you will probably have to deal with only one tab which would be the liveArea where you can launch the game from.

patsu said:
This Vita OS video is clearer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJgBeFhmn9I&feature=player_embedded

It also shows the bouncing avatars (at the bottom of the screen) I mentioned before.

that is an early version of the OS it looks different now
 
I hope they will be able to make over hauls down the line.


One thing I hate about the ps3 is that the xmb hasn't changed with the times.

Ps3 needs something more "connected" if that makes sence. Vita looks to be better designed for communicating with friends which is great.
 

Ellis Kim

Banned
That video with the sticky fingers guy is kinda bad, but yeeeeeeeeeeess! web browser, 4 square, skype app, facebook app, yesssss.

PS3 needs Skype... its gonna be weird if PS3 doesn't have skype when VITA comes out... Its gonna be even more weird if the PS3 doesn't have party voice chat, too.

They're gonna make this into a quasi-tablet. I know it.

blu said:
XMB can be adapted easily to work on a touch screen, particularly one with gestures. And XMB follows the 1st rule of UIs: coherency. These screenshots show an utter mess of a UI.
The elegance and genius of the XMB is that its designed with the d-pad as the primary navigational input source. Vita is touch-screen capacitive: why the hell would it have an XMB?
 

patsu

Member
Ellis Kim said:
The elegance and genius of the XMB is that its designed with the d-pad as the primary navigational input source. Vita is touch-screen capacitive: why the hell would it have an XMB?

XMB tries to scale itself. e.g., the list expands and contracts if you have more or fewer items.

In this UI, I don't know why the screen shows 9 empty white buttons when there is only one item to choose. Just hide the empty buttons.
 

Negaiido

Member
While I like the XMB It does get a bit old and screams for something new. So I'm glad that the PS Vita has something different.
Let's just hope if it doesn't work as well that we get a new UI just like MS did.
 

Nix

Banned
I'll live. I mean, the multiple faceted interface does look pretty interesting, not to mention messagin friends on the fly.

Looks like the Vita is going to be one hell of a beast.
 

patsu

Member
Negaiido said:
While I like the XMB It does get a bit old and screams for something new. So I'm glad that the PS Vita has something different.
Let's just hope if it doesn't work as well that we get a new UI just like MS did.

It doesn't take a lot of effort to clean up the current UI.
 

Replicant

Member
Okay, I admit that while I'm not fond of the bubbles interface, the rest of the UI looks really good. Good job Sony! But can't we do something about the bubbles? Please?
 

Jucksalbe

Banned
It looks nice, but with trophies and a friends list, it really needs multiple user accounts more than anything and I didn't see a "Log Out" button, so I'm not very optimistic about that.
 

Takao

Banned
Jucksalbe said:
It looks nice, but with trophies and a friends list, it really needs multiple user accounts more than anything and I didn't see a "Log Out" button, so I'm not very optimistic about that.

Sony is very much under the mantra that it's 1 handheld per person, where as consoles are generally for the entire family to use.
 

Ushojax

Should probably not trust the 7-11 security cameras quite so much
It looks a mess. Great variety of features but there's no consistency across the OS and it all looks cluttered.
 

Jucksalbe

Banned
Takao said:
Sony is very much under the mantra that it's 1 handheld per person, where as consoles are generally for the entire family to use.

This also means you probably won't be able to get trophies on your main account with games you downloaded from another store (my main is EU, but I often download from the US store) and whenever you switch, I guess your friend list will switch as well.
And that's of course on top of the shitty situation that my girlfriend can't have her own friends list and trophies (or the other way around).
 

/XX/

Member
blu said:
XMB can be adapted easily to work on a touch screen, particularly one with gestures. And XMB follows the 1st rule of UIs: coherency. These screenshots show an utter mess of a UI.
That LiveArea user interface is customizable to a great extent, and except for the Near application, all the screens represented there show a specific choice of colors made for those dummy user's profiles & accounts, for demonstration. As a example, the background will be similar to the XMB ribbon on the PS3 platform, and persistent through the biggest part of PSVITA's use (Live mode and Index mode), with a color scheme selected by the user for each different instance.

You can make it as coherent as you want...
 
It looks very fully featured and quite intuitive (if a bit cluttered)

It's gotta be taking up a large chunk of that RAM though (Wouldn't be surprised if it was a full 128MB, especially since it can apparantly run apps in the background)

"Part of the reason [for including 512MB of RAM] is more RAM means easier development for game developers," Sony president of Worldwide Studios Shu Yoshida told Eurogamer at Gamescom.

"But as important as that is to allow the PS Vita always to do more while the game is running in the background, or when you switch between the game and other applications or system software functionalities.

"So the reason why we were able to include something like Party, which enables cross-game voice chat, is because we designed Vita so it always has enough resources to handle something like that behind the game while it's running."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-18-sony-why-ps-vita-has-512mb-of-ram
 
Meisadragon said:
Should be less than the PS3 games I guess, but it feels like collecting trophies on the Vita will be a lot more fun and addictive.
Uh, why? It should be the exact same. ~50+Platinum for full games, ~12 for small PSN games.

Anyway, thank god they're getting rid of the XMB. I loved it a couple of years ago but ever since, I've gotten more and more annoyed at it. As they've added more and more functionality to it, it's become more and more cluttered. Scrolling down large lists is a pain in the ass and they often look like a mess. And I have to wonder how many PS3 owners don't even know they can press triangle on basically everything to get more options because I've encountered a couple. I just don't think it's that user friendly and doesn't really lend itself well to expanding its functionality.

The Vita's UI on the other hand, looks pretty good to me. I am a little worried the different pages (or whatever they're called) may be a little jarring, but I imagine I'll get used to it after a while. In particular though, I love the game pages they've got, especially that Wipeout one. It looks so pretty.

Pity the store still looks shit though. I can't wait to see all SCEE and SCEA's incompetent store managers, who seem to have no idea whatsoever about UI's, create a complete clusterfuck out of it. That'll be great.
 
It looks great. And I'm sure there'll be lots of themes - minimalistic ones as well.

Also, finally:
• (Voicechat) Party's
• Consistent game-invites/joining
• Activity-streams

Lets hope some of these will make it into the PS3's firmware.
I mean, you WILL be able to play some multiplayer-games cross-platform (PS3 / Vita), so it would make sense.

What I'm also wondering about, is the status bar. It looks like there are some icons in there that indicate which apps/services are running. Do you think we'll be able to pull it down like with Android, so we can easily switch between/close apps?
 

Autofokus

Member
counting fail

dvvgM.jpg
 

/XX/

Member
Nuclear Muffin said:
It's gotta be taking up a large chunk of that RAM though (Wouldn't be surprised if it was a full 128MB, especially since it can apparantly run apps in the background)
It wouldn't surprise me as well, as SCEI has a long running problem in leveraging that pretty big OS memory footprint the PS3 platform suffered (and still suffers, in part). I suppose they can continue optimizing it through those habitual firmware updates, though.
 
Any word on some kind of App Store/Market for non-gaming apps? Because perhaps I could just trade in my phone for a cheaper one and finally get some decent battery life out if it, while I use my Vita for browsing/apps etc.

Is there a built-in GPS by the way?
 

Gravijah

Member
magicaltrevor said:
Any word on some kind of App Store/Market for non-gaming apps? Because perhaps I could just trade in my phone for a cheaper one and finally get some decent battery life out if it, while I use my Vita for browsing/apps etc.

Is there a built-in GPS by the way?

3G version has GPS, yes.
 

Replicant

Member
Takao said:
Sony is very much under the mantra that it's 1 handheld per person, where as consoles are generally for the entire family to use.

That is such a BS! Fix this Sony! I have a dummy account that I use if a friend wants to try out a game so he won't mess up my save file. This is not possible if only 1 account is possible at one time.
 

Takao

Banned
magicaltrevor said:
Any word on some kind of App Store/Market for non-gaming apps? Because perhaps I could just trade in my phone for a cheaper one and finally get some decent battery life out if it, while I use my Vita for browsing/apps etc.

Is there a built-in GPS by the way?

Built in GPS is for the 3G/Wi-Fi Model. The Wi-Fi only model will contain a less accurate roaming GPS technology.

As for non-gaming apps, it seems that'll happen. I don't think it'll be as robust as an iPhone's app store or anything but Facebook, Twitter, ForSquare, Skype, and Nico Nico Douga (think of Youtube but for Japan) are all confirmed so far.
 

Takao

Banned
CrankyKong said:
How does that work?

I believe it catches Wi-Fi hotspots rather than cell towers (they're using Skyhook's technology which IIRC is what Apple uses). That will work well for urban areas, but you're SOL in rural environments.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
Meisadragon said:
They should have given you credit for that.

It's OK. I guess Eurogamer and NeoGAF have some kind of cross-posting agreement we never knew about.

So we can now post Eurogamer articles, unlinked.

(Seriously though, I mean, the first set of images are entirely Sony's and all that - via JustPushStart - but the second batch required someone to cap/extract/edit them depending on the source - and it's just laziness on their part, and a little cheeky, to copy-and-paste)
 
gofreak said:
It's OK. I guess Eurogamer and NeoGAF have some kind of cross-posting agreement we never knew about.

So we can now post Eurogamer articles, unlinked.

(Seriously though, I mean, the first set of images are entirely Sony's and all that - via JustPushStart - but the second batch required someone to cap/extract/edit them depending on the source - and it's just laziness on their part, and a little cheeky, to copy-and-paste)

Meh, they're unprofessional thieves. I've had plenty of stuff stolen from me before.
 
is a game live area kinda like your game icon on ps3, the one where your wallpaper changed into that particular game's wallpaper just right before you press X to play the game? if it is, I kinda like it that they now add additional link like leaderboard upfront like that. so I can scheck leaderboard without even going into the game?
 
Callibretto said:
is a game live area kinda like your game icon on ps3, the one where your wallpaper changed into that particular game's wallpaper just right before you press X to play the game? if it is, I kinda like it that they now add additional link like leaderboard upfront like that. so I can scheck leaderboard without even going into the game?

Yes this is what they seem to be going for as you can see in these pics
YLS7r.jpg

8h0MI.jpg


It is also explained in the old vid from the January reveal, starts at 0:26

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLbXqCl1X-Y&feature=related
 

Raonak

Banned
Yeah, still not liking the bubble interface.

XMB would have worked pretty decently with swipe guesters. Basically a horizontal, organised, version of the bubbles.
 
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