Thoughts about Vita + PS3 Crossplay wrt Wii U style gameplay.

[Mendel]

Seems like they´re going to be able to do pretty much everything that Wii U does if you get both a Vita and a PS3... Vita is going to be usable as a super expensive Wii U controllerish thing together with PS3!

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2012/02/09/inside-ps-vita-cross-play-with-ps3/

They´re talking (among other things) about playing the same game with Vita and Ps3 where the Vita player plays the game from different perspective compared to PS3 player. (sounds like that killer freaks shooter for Wii U for example)

Now the only thing that I can think of is missing in Sony´s strategy is the wider customer audience. 3d, playstation move and now Vita crossplay are all great ideas but they are now seriously fragmenting the user base. Can you realistically even make a ps3 game that requires a Move for motion cotrols and a Vita for the second window to the game world? One such idea would be like the wii u golf game demonstration where you would place Vita / Wii U controller on floor near you and see the ball down there and then swing the club with move / wiimote controller. I don´t think you can do that and expect great sales on Vitaps3 but you can with Wii U... (call that a wii u sports resort and start the money printer. Call it Move Sports Crossplay edition and... well... not so much.)

Wii U will have the platform where everyone has the controller.
The total cost of systems for this Sony Bunde will be horribafuckus.
Wii U will probably be more powerful hardware.


But the thing is Sony is now beating Nintendo to the market with product being available earlier! Of course this is very interesting for early adopters like me. (Remains to be seen if much of Wii U style software will become available for PS3+vita before Wii U is out)

Any thoughts?

 

[Gitaroo]

"Wii U will probably be more powerful hardware."

Yes, but Vita on its own has a CPU and GPU but not the Wii U controller, which may balance things out a bit. Ppl say the lag will be bad for wifi, I think what if you preload data onto the Vita instead of converting everything into 480p video and stream over which takes the PS3 processing power. Say a game like aliens which uses the the Wii U controller to output the pulse radar or some basic inventory management, those files shouldn't be very big to install on the vita. Shouldn't the amount of data stream cut down significantly?

 

[Ninjaprime]

No one is going to make anything for it because no one is going to pay $250 for a controller.

 

[Arwin]

No one is going to make anything for it because no one is going to pay $250 for a controller.

But people who own a ps3 could be buying a Vita for portable gaming.

Anyway, MvC3 already has some of this. You can use the Vita as a controller for the PS3 version, in which case the touch screen offers shortcuts to perform combos. You can see it in the MvC3 official promo.

MvC3 is using the latest MT Framework, apparently. Since that is their mulitplatform engine, I'm willing to bet this is some of the first possible evidence that Wii U and PS3/Vita development will see some cross-pollination.

 

[Mendel]

If you need to buy mvc3 for both ps 3 and vita, then it is too much... Can you buy it for one and still have it for both machines?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Now the only thing that I can think of is missing in Sony´s strategy is the wider customer audience.

Yep. They're still uncertain. As ever, they'll have possibilities that a few devs will explore and then it'll be dropped as uneconomical. Maybe Wuu games will get Vita support ported. If Wuu offers something compelling.

 

[Ninjaprime]

But people who own a ps3 could be buying a Vita for portable gaming.

Anyway, MvC3 already has some of this. You can use the Vita as a controller for the PS3 version, in which case the touch screen offers shortcuts to perform combos. You can see it in the MvC3 official promo.

MvC3 is using the latest MT Framework, apparently. Since that is their mulitplatform engine, I'm willing to bet this is some of the first possible evidence that Wii U and PS3/Vita development will see some cross-pollination.

I'm sure there will be some token apps/games that work with it for the token audience that has both systems, but there will probably be a token amount of effort put into it just as a "zomg look at this!" marketing scheme.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I see little reason to think Vita+PS3 support will be any more widespread than PSEye support (excluding Move). PSEye had a couple of minigames, EOJ and EyePet, and that was it. Again, if Wuu ideas port then maybe it'll happen, if Sony provide a framework that makes it very easy to port.

 

[Arwin]

I see little reason to think Vita+PS3 support will be any more widespread than PSEye support (excluding Move). PSEye had a couple of minigames, EOJ and EyePet, and that was it. Again, if Wuu ideas port then maybe it'll happen, if Sony provide a framework that makes it very easy to port.

There's a pretty simple reason for it.

A) Sony has provided SDK support - they talked about it shortly after E3 already I think. And they have done this with a clear view of making sure Wii U type stuff would be easy to do for developers. Multi-platform developers really like being able to have multiple platforms for this type of support, so I'm pretty sure you'll see this happen a fair bit. Of course, this will offset the fact that PS3s don't come with Vita's standard, but on the other hand there is a chance that the market of people owning both Vita and PS3 could develop at a similar rate initially as Wii U in total. I also will be very interested to see what the total cost for Sony would be for combining a PS3 and a Vita in one box versus the Wii base + U controller. There's a chance that they won't be that far apart.
B) The Vita's functionality overlaps a default controller. That makes it more interesting to support than PS Eye, which is much more specialist and difficult to use. Just giving additional touch input alone should be pretty trivial to do. Outputting a second screen / map / or whatever to that instead of split-screen should also be pretty easy, and there is plenty of dual screen experience among developers after all these years of DS to throw in stuff that is known to work. Heck, I even reckon that using a Vita as a debug output could be interestesting enough for developers to do some basic stuff there. Not saying it is guaranteed to happen of course, but it's possible and likely to be very easy. All this will stand and fall a little bit of course by how successful the Vita is as a standalone device, and what kind of financial incentive there is to do it of course, but I'm pretty confident it's going to be a *thing*. Just not confident yet how big. But considering the effort required, I think unless Nintendo pays good money, all multi-platform releases that have similar functionality using the Wii U tablet are going to have it in the PS3 version.

Also wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is in the process of adding support to Windows Phone 7 for similar stuff as we speak.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Well MS is rumoured to be adding a touchscreen to their next controller. But I can't believe any dev will target a £250 controller for PS3 unless it's really as easy as clicking a compiler checkbox. The moment they have to rewrite code for Vita from Wuu, the market just won't be there, surely? I mean, if you create a game that goes on to sell 2 milion on PS3, which is a reasonable innings, the number of Vita owners will be however many of those PS3 owners happen to also have a Vita. If Vita sell well that may be 10%, or 200,000. How much money is it worth spending on a couple of hundred thousand users? If you're not getting anything back from them, is it worth it at all? The flipside is the idea that you write a game that supports Vita and increase sales of your PS3 title to PS3 owners who wouldn't have bought it except for the fact it has Vita integration, which depends entirely on what it adds which I'm still unsure of.

If the same devs could target smartphones then I believe it could take off. If it were my project, I'd wait and see, and I imagine lots of others will do the same and so nothing will happen beyond a couple of examples, like Sixaxis. Some will add Vita support, deem it's not worth bothering with, and it'll be dropped. Like various handheld<>console interactions in the past.

 

[babybumb]

They should just enable the remote play for all (new) titles. It is clearly working with firmwares that don't even support the latest Vita version of remote play with no official support from the games at all

It dosen't seem to be taking too much mem/power out of the PS3 as the game is rendering at much lower res. I think they might be saving it for E3 to combat Wii U head on

 

[Arwin]

They should just enable the remote play for all (new) titles. It is clearly working with firmwares that don't even support the latest Vita version of remote play with no official support from the games at all

It dosen't seem to be taking too much mem/power out of the PS3 as the game is rendering at much lower res. I think they might be saving it for E3 to combat Wii U head on

I think it's already been confirmed that it should work with all titles as long as it runs at the PSP resolution of 480x272. Higher resolutions require more memory and will have to be supported by games natively, in that they'll have to be able to relinquish some memory etc.

What holds them back could be a number of things:
1. The control options aren't done yet. The Vita doesn't have R2, R3, L2 or L3, and although it seems trivial to support these with the Back Touch for instance, it may still require some testing and tweaking particularly as R2 and L2 are analog.
2. They're worried that 480x272 will disappoint people and are looking in supporting it at a higher resolution without increasing memory budget. I have a feeling they may think they may be able to get streaming native SD to Vita to work for all titles, but who knows?
3. Game developers have to give their consent for each individual game and/or some developers are making a fuss about it, worried they will sell fewer Vita versions of their titles.

As for next-gen consoles, yes, it wouldn't surprise me at all if next gen controllers include a touch screen, as by that time the additional cost is near trivial (they don't have to be the latest, hottest display tech), and the value is clear.

 

[patsu]

Sony may not be able to deliver the full potential of the Playstation platform if they simply do a "cross-play" between Vita and PS3. Vita is more expensive than a WiiU pad. However it is also much much more powerful.

There are at least 2 levels:

(A) Consumers and Biz models
Pricing, unified and consistent user experiences across many areas such as:
* RemotePlay (including OnLive-style gaming).
* Cross-platform Play (between Vita and other devices, plus PS3 with other devices, and of course between Vita and PS3).
* Resume Play (e.g., Same game between PS3 and Vita)
* Pay-once-play-on-every-Playstation

Sony have all these approaches working in a haphazard fashion. They should refine and consolidate them better.

(B) Platform
Cross platform development, run-time, PSN, etc.

I don't see Vita and PS3 like WiiU pad vs main unit. I see the Playstation devices as intelligent nodes on a network. Kutaragi's notion of P2P network may be more apt. After all, we already have P2P online gaming today, Skype P2P phone calls, and P2P Karaoke services.

If Sony want to do a WiiU pad clone, they may have to release a specialized pad for PS3 just like a WiiU pad. Honestly, I think it's more interesting for Sony to re-use an iPad or Android tablet for that purpose, and then extend the Playstation <-> iOS/Android relationship further.

 

[patsu]

If Sony want to do a WiiU pad clone, they may have to release a specialized pad for PS3 just like a WiiU pad. Honestly, I think it's more interesting for Sony to re-use an iPad or Android tablet for that purpose, and then extend the Playstation <-> iOS/Android relationship further.

Something like this would be fun, if interoperable/integrated with PS3 and Vita:

Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year’s End
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/google-to-sell-terminator-style-glasses-by-years-end/

People who constantly reach into a pocket to check a smartphone for bits of information will soon have another option: a pair of Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time.

According to several Google employees familiar with the project who asked not to be named, the glasses will go on sale to the public by the end of the year. These people said they are expected “to cost around the price of current smartphones,” or $250 to $600.

...

I would pair the HUD with the Vita in my car.

 

[JB9861]

Half baked implementation is my initial thought.

 

[patsu]

PS3 and Vita Cross-Play ? Yeah, it's not fully fleshed out at this moment. I see a new "Cross-Play" category on the Vita PS Store now. Only 2 games so far (Hustle Kings, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom). Hope to see more soon.

EDIT:
Did a quick check. According to here, the following games will also support Cross-Play:
* WipeOut 2048 (Vita) vs WipeOut HD (PS3)
* MotorStorm RC
* Top Darts