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PlayStation TV (Vita TV) officially discontinued in Japan

I honestly prefer the PSTV to the Vita and use it for pretty much all my Vita, PSP, and PS1 games, but it was definitely half baked and sent to die.
 

2+2=5

The Amiga Brotherhood
Well it's not unexpected because it was a good idea really badly executed but imo you are forgetting that Japan is the land of handhelds and mobile, why should they prefer the home version to the handheld version? It doesn't automatically mean that it will be discontinued soon in the more home console centric west too(but i don't exclude it though)
 
I suppose it was profitable. It's a Vita without a screen, buttons, sticks or speakers. Sure, it's got LAN, HDMI, power sockets but they will cost peanuts and they probably had a few DS3 controllers lying around to throw in.
 

Human_me

Member
It definatly had good potential, I got one a couple of months back and its great playing certain vita games, PS1 and PSP games.

My version is up to date currently, but I'm not going to update it anymore hopefully someone will hack it so I can start putting some homebrew stuff on it.
 

KyleCross

Member
So does that mean future Vita titles (as little as there probably will be) will no longer be required to be PSTV compatiable?
 
Great idea. Shit execution.

Apart from game compatibility issues one of the biggest drawbacks is that there isn't a Netflix app on it for UK/EU. I may have got one of these if it hadn't of been put out in such a half arsed way.
 

Ludens

Banned
I bought a PSTV because it was 20€ (plus additional 10€ for a 4GB memory card) just to play games I have with Plus. The fact is, 90% of those games are impossible to play on PSTV, and not because there are controls problems like for Uncharted Golden Abyss, but just because Sony decided to put a lock on some games (like Soul Sacrifice, it can't be played on TV).
 

Champion

Member
The way Sony handled this and the Vita makes me wonder how they'll conduct themselves in the VR market if things start off slow or dont catch on for whatever reason.
 

Ushay

Member
So how many people have expensive paperweights now? Such a shitty thing to do, did they even make an effort to revive the product?
 

Ludens

Banned
So how many people have expensive paperweights now? Such a shitty thing to do, did they even make an effort to revive the product?

No. An effort could be whitelist all titles which have no problems running on the device, locked by Sony for some obscure reasons...but they didn't do that at all.
 
I'd use mine more often but I found that it doesn't play nicely with my setup, which is controlled by a power saving adapter which turns the devices off standby. Vita TV loses its settings which have to be put back in again. None of my other devices do this.
 
Vita TV was one of the most poorly thought out devices ever.

It lacks the basic control functionality to allow a lot of the top titles on the system run.

Literally, no reason for it to exist.

Let's face facts, it was a remote play box.
 
Would it be a stretch to think the device was only made to utilise unused Vita components?

As a UK gamer, that whitelist was fucking infuriating. The whole endeavour was atrociously handled.

If any good comes of its demise, perhaps it will push Sony to release PS One games on PS4, as they are running out of avenues to sell them.
 

Shig

Strap on your hooker ...
This thing would have had a far different fate if they targeted it as a robust streaming player that also played PS games, rather than as a crippled Vita you could hook to your TV.

No internal storage was the big death knell, though. Even with some missing functionality, it's not that hard to conceptually sell someone on a cheap set-top box that could play a bunch of Playstation games... but when you add "Oh but you've got to also buy this overpriced proprietary memory card if you want to actually use it," any interest generated immediately takes a headlong leap off a cliff.
The way Sony handled this and the Vita makes me wonder how they'll conduct themselves in the VR market if things start off slow or dont catch on for whatever reason.
Same way they treated Eyetoy, Move, and their stereoscopic 3D game initiatives. And hell, some of those actually sold really well out of the gate.

Sony's always had a very short attention span for secondary peripherals and features. Big push initially, then they just kinda stand back and let the content fade away.
 

Breads

Banned
With Vita 2000/ Vita TV I couldn't believe Sony doubled down on the vita memory card. How could they have thought that people would warm up to extremely overpriced memory* cards.
 
With Vita 2000/ Vita TV I couldn't believe Sony doubled down on the vita memory card. How could they have thought that people would warm up to extremely overpriced videocards.

I honestly feel like the stupid memory card decisions were the biggest barrier to the vita line being any sort of success. If they had just gone with SD or MicroSD I bet vita would have done significantly better than it did. That's all my speculation though and there's no way to know if I'm right or not.
 

Ludens

Banned
Would it be a stretch to think the device was only made to utilise unused Vita components?

As a UK gamer, that whitelist was fucking infuriating. The whole endeavour was atrociously handled.

If any good comes of its demise, perhaps it will push Sony to release PS One games on PS4, as they are running out of avenues to sell them.

Do you know what is infuriating? That some games are whitelisted for US store and blacklisted on EU. And viceversa.
 

Nictel

Member
Can I ask why so many want Netflix on this thing? Personally I see no use for it since at this point every other device hooked up to the TV, and even including the TV it self has a Netflix app.

Other than that yeah white list and not using mSD are obvious mistakes. I got mine purely to play the Persona games on my TV. So I have no regrets, HD Yukiko is worth it :p.
 

U2NUMB

Member
It was a very cool idea that I believe could have worked if Sony had put any effort into it. A new ui and marketing would have helped...
 

coopolon

Member
Got mine for $20, I've only used it for a few hours before realizing I prefer everything on a handheld and bought a Vita but hard to regret a $20 purchase too much.
 
It was a good idea Vita TV, just so poorly executed. UK version especially, the compatibility of games is pathetic.

And the price is not right, specially if you have a vita, there is no much use for it.
I would gladly paid £20 for it. I have seen it a lot for €20, but from webs that doesn't ship outside its countries.

Also, the UI is terrible, it should have its own dashboard, and not the vita's
 
They should have just put Android on it and offered PS streaming services as additional exclusive apps. Maybe even have certain Vita games appear on Playstation Now.
 

Alfredo

Member
I bought a Playstation TV to take screenshots of Danganronpa Vita and convert them to higher res character sprites.

Danganronpa just came out on PC/Steam, making extracting those sprites a trivial process. Once that happened, the PSTV lost its usefulness to me...only appropriate that it's now officially dead.

I hope the homebrew scene can do neat stuff with it now.
 

koutoru

Member
I actually am using PSTV more than my Vita now since most of the vita games I have now are actually on the whitelist.

I wonder how this will affect whitelist support for localized games since I don't recall localizations alone actually changing a games whitelist status.
 

PurpleSquid

Neo Member
Thats a shame, its a pretty neat idea that sony messed up with their whitelisting and also not being able to use the vita as a controller for games that required touch support like lbp vita and uncharted
 
I use it as a way to play my ps4 when travelling. That's all it's ever been used for and I'm ok with it. It's a good remote play box. Hopefully Sony will release that official PC remote play tool
 

forms

Member
If they had decent memory card prices everything with the Vita name attached to it would be in a whole different place right now.
 

axisofweevils

Holy crap! Today's real megaton is that more than two people can have the same first name.
Sony made some really bizarre decisions with this device. Its incredible that the same company that made the PS4 got it so wrong here.

The Vita is qHD but the Vita TV upscales to 720p.
Touch screen games are not compatible, splitting the userbase - the DS4 controller's touchpad could possibly work with this and it is compatible, but they bundle it with a DS3 because reasons.

Basically, everyone I knew completely lost interest when they realised they couldn't play Gravity Rush on it.
 

Jimrpg

Member
The support for the device was pathetic.

I've been saying it in a few Sony threads but most Sony add ons just get supported poorly. Move controllers, network adapter and hard drive for ps2.

This was a really elegant machine that got no traction because the messaging wasn't clear.

I always considered getting one but it felt like a gimped vita with no real advantages.
 
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