If you’re a PSone Classics fan, you would be amiss if you don’t play these games on your PSP. Sony this past week took the veil of mystery off their new portable handheld console, the PSVita. Not only is it going to be a brand new console with amazing graphics and new tech, it will run all your PSone Classics and PSP games right out of the box with your same PSN handle, and up rez the PSP games, and map camera controls to the second analog nub. If you ever had any ideas about buying the PSPgo, you must be glad that you saved that 250, because amazingly enough this new powerful system is the same price.

The real question is, do you want console controls (and console styled games) on a portable device?

Will Sony's plan work?

This is a big question, it seems like people have been using this as a criticism as to why the original PSP didn’t defeat the DS last generation. The PSP was a powerful (and still is a powerful) device. But it didn’t manage to become as popular as the DS, and jump ahead in sales (although 70 million worldwide for the PSP is pretty good). Now it did defeat the DS in Japan, where it still sells more than even the new 3DS on a weekly basis. This mostly had to do with the software content, especially the game that became a sensation, Monster Hunter, which is essentially an MMORPG that you play with three other friends. Why didn’t the PSP become a major player in North America and Europe? There’s a simple reason for this, the lack of shooters.

In Japan the RPG is king of all game genres, they get the best scores, they get the best sales, and games like Modern Warfare 2 that sell millions of copies in one day in Europe and North America, only manage to sell a few thousand in Japan over a significant period. Shooters for the most part are not that great on the PSP, there have been three or for great examples on them being done well on the platform, three of those games were made by Sony Bend, who is working on the new Uncharted Golden Abyss title for the PS Vita, and the other was done by Hideo Kojima, a legendary games developer. These are the only people who managed to make the PSP one analog stick control scheme work with shooters, and despite those being excellent games, but 4 games a console does not make.

They tilt!

But the PS Vita is going to court the shooter market with two real analog nubs.

Everyone knows that now the PS Vita will have the control scheme that everyone is familiar with on the consoles, and this will make games like Call of Duty, Killzone, Uncharted, and even Bioshock (all announced titles) really become good shooter experiences on the handheld. The question is whether or not people will jump on it, and make it a hit in the West. Of course Capcom would be foolish if they didn’t have a Monster Hunter game ready for this console as soon as it hit store shelves, so that will cover the Japanese market pretty well, they just need to make sure they can capture the Western market, and it seems like they’ll be off to a good start.

The Vita needs to make it’s on identity as well.

Jeff Gertsmann, a trusted games journalist (and for good reason)

Watching a recent episode of the Bonus round Giant Bomb founder Jeff Gertsmann said that he doesn’t want console style games on the PS Vita, and he likes those kinds of games at home on his big screen. Now, this is a strange admission in my opinion, but I understand that this is the way it was with the PSP, mostly due to the poor controls for shooters, more quirky type games became synonymous with the system, like Patapon, and LocoRoco.  These games were cool and fun, but they didn’t really get people to run out and grab the system. Games like God of War Ghost of Sparta and Chains of Olympus did. These are some of the best reviewed games on the system, and the amazing thing about them is that they emulated the PS2 and PS3 console games to a T. The thing that wowed people the most about this titles is that they controlled well, something that shooters just don’t on the PSP. There’s no question that the Vita needs to get some exclusive software really speak for the system, and make it stand out for people to grab it, but if they don’t have core franchises for gamers, like Call of Duty, or Uncharted, it won’t become a real hit like it could be.

 

What do you think, Do you think the PSVita will control just like a Dual Shock, and that’s the Barrier for most people?

 

PSoneClassics.com