Sony's NeoGeo Pocket's (PSP2/Vita) business/non technical ramifications talk

dobwal said:
Once you add a couple of track pads underneath the tablet that can simulate button pushes very well, then you have something that works very much like a console controller and looks nothing like a netbook.

No one will ever buy a $500-$600 tablet just for gaming but if tablet manufacturers continue doing what they never did as PC vendors, complementing their cpus with comparable gpus and not stratisfying cpu/gpu performance based on retail price across their lineup, then they will make tablet gaming more viable then it ever was on the PC.

Then the question becomes why bother buying a portable gaming device and a tablet when the tablet is just as capable of gaming. Remember $300-$500 dollars is an acceptable price tag for a tablet year in and year out. And tablet makers are already acclimating consumers to the habit of updating on a shorter term basis. We may end in a situation where tablets surpass portables within 10-18 months every generation where the typical buying habits allow for a rather sizeable userbase with tablets less than two years old across time.

I think Sony and/or maybe MS's success will be forcing upon market the question, "Why buy a $500 tablet when a$200 gaming device that already has Android/WinMo OS can do those things and more?"
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Not at all!... The number of people who forked out £500+ for an iPad only to rebuy it again the following year with a "2" on the end i'm quite sure are very very minimal (probably only the most hardcore apple fanboys). The majority of iPad 2 users will be new customers and i'm sure most will not update their hardware till they've had at least 3 years worth from it. At the end of the day people can be dumb but they're not that dumb.

Gamers specifically (because that's what we're talking about here) have been aclimatised to spending $250 to $300 on a console (home and portable) every 5 years. It will take alot more than indoctrination by the church of Apple and mobile phone company contracts to get the vast majority of console gamers to start forking out vast amounts of money on an annual basis just to play a higher res version of angry birds.
 
Prophecy2k said:
Ok, that's strange cuz my dev buddy was 100% sure that the sticks clicked in... perhaps i must have misunderstood him then :p
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I consider it pretty likely that Yoshida was mistaken and was assuming the question was about R2 and L2, which are also not present on the PS Vita afaik.
 
Andrew House interview:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-09-sonys-andrew-house-interview

Besides Vita, he talks about PS3 exclusive games, the PSN breach, 3D gaming, and Move...

Eurogamer: The Vita price is cheaper than expected. Was that a deliberate move?

Andrew House: I characterise it as a very strong push from the marketing and publishing arm within the organisation. If we were to build not just a core gamer audience for Vita but to move, I would hope very swiftly, towards more of a mass market proposition, having a strategic, aggressive price was clearly a key part of that equation.

I'm really happy we were able to achieve that. Our engineers have done a stellar job of delivering a great product, but also allowing us to hit a price point we feel is attractive.

The strategy, in essence, is we want phase one to appeal to the core gamer audience, technology and entertainment enthusiasts, hope they validate the experience, but then move more swiftly than with PlayStation Portable into a much broader audience.

Price is important. But a lot of the experiences are designed with connectivity from the ground up. We think that's an absolute essential, particularly for a younger audience. Certainly based on the experience of my own kids, they view connectivity and connected devices as a birthright. That is a key part of the proposition.
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Eurogamer: There seems some confusion over when Vita will launch in the various territories. When will it arrive in Europe?

Andrew House: We're not in a position to talk about specific launch timeframes right now. Just to clarify, it's for one very good reason. Sony was significantly impacted by the events of 11th March in Japan. That has led us, as our parent has also discussed as well, to undertake a very broad assessment of impact on our supply chain and on our procurement of components, and we're still in the process of going through that full assessment.

Once we've done that and we know exactly where we are in terms of production quantities and the robustness of the supply chain, then we'll be in a much better position to talk about specific launch timeframes and specific geographies.
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Eurogamer: How long before the PS3 no longer seems future-proof?

Andrew House: I've always said we looked at PS3 as a ten years-plus lifecycle. The question mark for me is how big that plus is. Something we perhaps don't mention as much as we should is we're still selling PlayStation 2 in the millions around the world, 11 years after it launched.

Now, they're in different markets than they were and different profiles of gamer. We've with our US colleagues had a significant push into Latin America. We're working in India with local game developers for local content largely for PS2.

The reason I point that out is we've got some credibility in saying there's a possibility of at the very least a ten year lifecycle.

The goal is to keep searching for new experiences, whether it's PlayStation Move, which is only a year into the market and still showing huge potential for different experiences around that, but also just great content.

Eurogamer: There's been a lot of talk about the next-generation of home consoles and the PS4. Is it a bit premature?

Andrew House: From a Sony perspective, we're very comfortable with PS3 and the way that market's developing. We're highly focused on launching Vita as a next-generation portable now some seven years after PSP was launched. We're really not looking at anything beyond that at this stage.
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...about Move. I missed the 8.8 million sales (shipment ?) of PS Move.

Eurogamer: You announced 8.8 million sales of PS Move at your conference. Has it proven as successful as you'd hoped?

Andrew House: If I look back at our initial estimates it's tracking well beyond our initial expectations. We were perhaps a little bit conservative in our forecasts. It led us to be supply challenged during a large part of last year. We've addressed that now and we're in good and full supply.

We're particularly pleased with the success of Move in Europe. European consumers seem to have embraced the product. The reason for that is there is a heritage and credibility around lifestyle gaming on PlayStation, whether it's SingStar or EyeToy, that made it easier to build franchises and that connection with the European consumer.

But overall, globally, we're extremely pleased with the success. The goal now is to show this is not just about casual or lifestyle gaming experiences. We showed with Killzone that Move can be powerful when applied to a core gamer experience. The goal of the studios now is to focus on that and continue to deliver that great road map for consumers going forward.

Eurogamer: I was surprised to see Ken Levine on stage during your conference to announce Move support for BioShock Infinite and BioShock Vita. How did you convince him to change his mind about Move?

Andrew House: I would not be the best person to answer that question. But I suspect some of my US colleagues had some good and frank conversations.

...
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Didn't know Ken Levine said he's not going to support Move in BioShock earlier:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108613-Ken-Levine-Says-No-to-PS-Move-for-BioShock-Infinite
 
patsu said:
Didn't know Ken Levine said he's not going to support Move in BioShock earlier:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108613-Ken-Levine-Says-No-to-PS-Move-for-BioShock-Infinite
Click to expand...

Yeah, he was quite down on the device and i think he just saw it more as a casual gamers toy than something accurate enough to enhance an FPS gaming experience. I think the constant fanboy "PSMove vs. Kinect" comparisons have been most damaging to Move in this regard because most people simply fail to see that they are two different devices clearly positioned for different audiences. People like to lump together both motion control device as "hur dur motion controlz 4 teh casualz", where both can really see some more core excperiences realised in meaningful and fun ways (Move moreso with traditional gaming genres).

In terms of their positioning I think Sony has been aggressively pushing Move as a legitimate core gaming interface, and rightly so imho. I was encouraged at E3 to see Bioshock Infinite announced to be playable with it and i hope more 3rd parties will jump on board. After playing MAG, KZ3 and Socom 4 i just think that Move can breath a whole new life into the tired FPS genre, and particularly with those games that otherwise find it difficult to compete commercially with the juggernauts like COD (i'd buy the next COD day 1 if it supported Move). Adding more ways to play is always a good thing an i like that it's possible to do in an none intrusive way with Move.

Anyways, that's a really informative interview on PSVita. I hope we can see it here in Europe this year. I'm surprised with the launch lineup too. It's pretty solid and i'd interested in picking up quite a few of the launch games already.
 
Yes, it is also "synergistic" with Vita from a game UI perspective. Was happy to see new Move UI for that NBA game this E3. In IGN's podcast with Shuhei, they mentioned using Move to record SackBot movement.

Some hardcore FPS gamers seem to prefer KZ3's Move control. If Sony can introduce a good 3D control/navigation scheme (e.g., flying Warhawk, platforming in inFamous) with Move, add steering wheel attachment, polish Deadmund's Quest/Lights Out/Sorcery controls, and refine UnderSiege/RUSE RTS mechanics further, then it'd be a worthwhile, all-purpose motion controller. Even better if point-n-click UI can replace Dpad buttons for general PS3 navigation (web surfing, Hulu Plus, etc.).
 
patsu said:
Yes, it is also "synergistic" with Vita from a game UI perspective. Was happy to see new Move UI for that NBA game this E3. In IGN's podcast with Shuhei, they mentioned using Move to record SackBot movement.

Some hardcore FPS gamers seem to prefer KZ3's Move control. If Sony can introduce a good 3D control/navigation scheme (e.g., flying Warhawk, platforming in inFamous) with Move, add steering wheel attachment, polish Deadmund's Quest/Lights Out/Sorcery controls, and refine UnderSiege/RUSE RTS mechanics further, then it'd be a worthwhile, all-purpose motion controller. Even better if point-n-click UI can replace Dpad buttons for general PS3 navigation (web surfing, Hulu Plus, etc.).
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Yeah i think PSMove would be a solid analogue for the front touchscreen functionality present in Vita. It'd be interesting to see what kinds of functionality and gameplay possibilities we'd be able to get if a dev decided to do a PSV/PS3 Cross-Play game with one player using Move and another using their touchscreen on Vita. I think stuff like that would be innovative and really fun if done right.

Edit:
I picture in my mind a smaller spin-off StarHawk game but for PSV, that interfaces with the Starhawk shooter on PS3.
The PSV game could be a completely top-down view RTS game, but allowing for FPS/TPS gameplay so you can jump into a troop at anytime and blast away with the dual analogues. Then players on PSV could command and control their armies whilst playing online against PS3 players playing Starhawk. Typse of asymmetric gameplay like that makes me excited :D
 
For something unique to Move, would love to see a new scheme for controlling in-game objects in a 3D space. Anton spoke about using Move to control a snake's movement (as if you're holding the snake). I think controlling monsters (e.g., Dragon in Hoard), spaceships, transformers, etc. may work too.
 
Vita's new online gaming framework:


Hope they bring the relevant experiences to PS3.

What I like most, and have been nagging about PS Home equivalent:

* Party management

* Alerts + Live Area. Basically like Apple's notification center, and a game specific area to post relevant info about a game. This is kinda like a mini 2D Home I guess.

* Voice _and_ text chat (Read this from another article)


Near is a double edged sword. Hope they generalize it to allow virtual locations like GAF or B3D groups.

EDIT: The only weird one is CrossPlay. I'd generalize the user experience for cross play such that it can be applied to Steam vs PSN, OpenFeint vs PSN, instead of just PS3 vs Vita.
 
Any word on codec support? Supported resolutions (for video)? Not the screen itself, of course, but what resolutions, containers, framerates and codecs it can take and play back natively.

I really want a portable powerhouse media player that can support the same video encodes I use for media streaming (720p AVC mostly) with a dock (video out) and expandable memory. If this only gets me 2 out of those 3 I'd be happy since I'm likely to get one anyway.
 
No idea so far. If it's like PSP, then you'll need to convert the movies to Vita specs explicitly. The PSP video spec looks something like this but I have not tried for a long time:
http://blog.yogarine.com/2007/12/converting-video-for-psp-on-linux.html

So first I'll show you a updated list of the restrictions for video on the PSP in AVC (AFAIK):
MPEG-4 File Format
MPEG-4 AVC Video codec
H.264 Main Profile up to Level 3.0
Any framerate up to 30 fps
Up to 2 reference frames
Arithmetic Coding (CABAC)
Width/Height must be a multiple of 16
Allowed Resolutions:
Any resolution up to 320x240
352x240 (VCD)
352x480 (CVD)
480x272 (Native)
720x480 (DVD)
No 8x8 transform
No reference b-frames
MPEG-4 AAC Audio codec
48000 kHz
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My guess is it should support AVCHD natively since it's the specs Sony and Panasonic push.

EDIT: Oh yes, I saw a Vita slide indicating DLNA support too.

The other possible reference is the iPhone. What can they play ? Vita should have similar/better hardware capability.
 
patsu said:
The other possible reference is the iPhone. What can they play ? Vita should have similar/better hardware capability.
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If memory serves me, when I was cross shopping the ZuneHD, iPod Touch and Sony X-Series, the iPod's codec support was less than stellar (but not nearly as bad as the X Series). I think the Zune was the closest to what I was looking for, especially with the dock. But lacked something vital I was looking for (can't remember) and had you bound to the Zune software for management (much like iPod/iTunes). So I ended up searching pointlessly for a solution from a smaller vendor (Colby, Sansa, etc) to no avail, and ending up buying nothing and waiting for the next revs of the hardware. I already have to do 2 encodes for my media. A straight rip (BDs) for archiving (which I'll start using whenever I have end devices that can play them) and a 720p re-encode for streaming. I don't want to have to do yet another for mobile. I just want all of my devices to play absolutely everything, in the highest possible quality without me having to do anything. Is that asking too much? :p

patsu said:
EDIT: Oh yes, I saw a Vita slide indicating DLNA support too.
Click to expand...

Excellent. That was something else I was wondering about.
 
Gradthrawn said:
If memory serves me, when I was cross shopping the ZuneHD, iPod Touch and Sony X-Series, the iPod's codec support was less than stellar (but not nearly as bad as the X Series). I think the Zune was the closest to what I was looking for, especially with the dock. But lacked something vital I was looking for (can't remember) and had you bound to the Zune software for management (much like iPod/iTunes). So I ended up searching pointlessly for a solution from a smaller vendor (Colby, Sansa, etc) to no avail, and ending up buying nothing and waiting for the next revs of the hardware. I already have to do 2 encodes for my media. A straight rip (BDs) for archiving (which I'll start using whenever I have end devices that can play them) and a 720p re-encode for streaming. I don't want to have to do yet another for mobile. I just want all of my devices to play absolutely everything, in the highest possible quality without me having to do anything. Is that asking too much? :p
Click to expand...

... which reminds me Sony is still missing a way to do Blu-ray Managed Copy on PS3.
They should enable this for all their portables (PSP, Vita, S1, and S2). Right now, the support is spotty for PSP.
 
patsu said:
... which reminds me Sony is still missing a way to do Blu-ray Managed Copy on PS3.
They should enable this for all their portables (PSP, Vita, S1, and S2). Right now, the support is spotty for PSP.
Click to expand...

Seems to have completely fizzled out (although I haven't exactly been following it closely). Not that managed copy would have been any good for me (I want unmanaged copies of the movies I buy, which, ironically, I could get easier by not buying them). Still, I was curious to see how it would play out.
 
Gradthrawn said:
If memory serves me, when I was cross shopping the ZuneHD, iPod Touch and Sony X-Series, the iPod's codec support was less than stellar (but not nearly as bad as the X Series). I think the Zune was the closest to what I was looking for, especially with the dock. But lacked something vital I was looking for (can't remember) and had you bound to the Zune software for management (much like iPod/iTunes). So I ended up searching pointlessly for a solution from a smaller vendor (Colby, Sansa, etc) to no avail, and ending up buying nothing and waiting for the next revs of the hardware. I already have to do 2 encodes for my media. A straight rip (BDs) for archiving (which I'll start using whenever I have end devices that can play them) and a 720p re-encode for streaming. I don't want to have to do yet another for mobile. I just want all of my devices to play absolutely everything, in the highest possible quality without me having to do anything. Is that asking too much? :p



Excellent. That was something else I was wondering about.
Click to expand...

You raise an excellent point, I experimented with this too and its just too much work. Hopefully the PSV has robust codec support.
 
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