First Looks// PS Vita Experience: The Device

Sony is about to play its second hand at the portable gaming market, and on paper the PlayStation Vita is sounding like a quantum leap ahead of its predecessor, the PSP. It’s learned from consumer feedback, and also from changing trends in how portable content is now consumed thanks to unsuspecting rivals Apple.

But equally, expectations have changed with time. With the PSP being all but dead in the West for some years now, Sony is going to need to rely on third party support, integration of services and adequate pricing more than ever. In the run up to Vita’s February launch, SPOnG will be covering various aspects of the handheld - its lineup of games, the system software and its portability while on the road. To kick things off, we focus on the device itself.

Size Matters

Measuring in at about 20.5cm wide by 9.5cm high, the PlayStation Vita is bigger than the Nintendo 3DS and the PSP-1000 by a significant margin. When you compare the depth of the three devices though, the Vita comes off a fraction thinner than the 3DS and a fair amount slimmer than the original PSP model (ignoring the protruding analogue nubs). And it’s certainly a good degree lighter, which makes for some fantastic eye-trickery on Sony’s part.

Looking around the device, there’s been a concerted effort to hide as many holes as possible. Besides the headphone jack and the docking port, everything’s been elegantly covered up by pullout tabs. A Micro Memory Stick is placed in a card slot at the bottom of the unit - the cards themselves are so small! At the top, one tab houses the PS Vita card slot, while another contains a port surrounded by two fixing holes - similar to the ones beside the USB port on the PSP. I would imagine this would be used for any future add-on peripherals that Sony might release.

Pleasingly, there’s a large emphasis on analogue control rather than D-pad. Compared to the PSP, the Vita feels great in your hands. You're no longer having to contort your left thumb in order to gain some analogue control - you can rest the sides of the device on your forefingers and comfortably reach either the sticks or the buttons without giving yourself arthritis.

Although you can fit the handheld snugly into your pocket (just about), Sony has clearly designed and targeted the Vita to be a ‘premium portable’ product. There will be a big peripheral opportunity here when it comes to cases and covers - as shiny and glossy as it looks, you’ll want to keep that £230 investment as clean as possible. It’s just as susceptible to marks and smudges as the PSP was.

Pause; For the Camera

Inside the handheld, the impressive ARM A9 CPU, featuring four cores, is put to good use in terms of system and power management. Multi-tasking on the Vita (which I’ll cover in a future feature) is slick and games can instantly be continued when paused in the system’s LiveArea without any loading issues. The console can also be put to sleep in an instant, which is quite handy for a portable device and a bugbear on the PSP. When the Vita's been set to sleep for longer than a few minutes, however, there's a brief delay in pressing the power or PS Home button to wake it up.

The device comes with two cameras, which is useful for allowing Augmented Reality games like Invizimals on the PSP without the need for a bulky add-on attachment. After taking some snaps though, I don’t think I’d go out of my way to use the Vita over my iPhone 4 for impulse photography. Maybe it’s because I’ve been spoiled by the camera on Apple’s wonderphone, but a 640x480 VGA image seems comparatively lacklustre.

Regardless, for reaction shots (using the front-facing camera) and AR games, I reckon it would be just fine - assuming you’re in a room with enough light. You can choose to obtain location data which can be tagged to any photos you take in the application, and for some reason, there are multiple photo sizes that you can take - a regular, 4:3-style snap, a much more narrow photo or a psuedo-widescreen shot which involves the camera utilising its zoom functionality.

Screen Plays

The 5” OLED multi-touch screen is absolutely gorgeous, with games and internal apps alike featuring vibrant colours and crisp details. So captivating is this display that you’re likely to attract a crowd whilst playing Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Sony appears to have taken several cues from Apple too, as the capacitive touch screen allows pinch-to-zoom, double-tap-to-enlarge and in some apps, display rotation using the gyro sensors.

Unlike most touch screen displays on Android apps, Sony has ensured that there is no latency between your finger input and the command that takes place on the device. The same can be said for the back multi-touch panel, although this never really comes into play outside of games that require its use - and we’ll be covering Vita games at a later date.

Speaking broadly however, the rear touch pad is probably the device’s most interesting feature, but it does take some getting used to. When playing around with the system software, you get used to resting your fingers on the rear touch pad, which makes for a surprise when you hop into a game of Super Stardust Delta and realise you’re accidentally using your entire supply of Black Hole Bombs. Arranging your fingers so that you don’t touch the panel can be a bit of a disorienting experience.

There’s definitely a lot of kit packed into the PlayStation Vita - on the face of it, it’s worth the £230 asking price (except perhaps for the camera). But it’s going to need more than high-end specs to encourage gamers to invest - Sony has promised a tight integration of services and software features into the device, and it will be this side of things that we’ll be covering in Part 2 of SPOnG’s Vita Experience.