Righting the Vita ship - part I

Intro
Although I feel its unnecessary at this point to write about this topic, the business side of me wonders what I would do if given the opportunity to resolve issues for Sony.  After approximately seven months of being released in North America, there certainly have been lessons learned and steps I believe need to be taken to "right this ship".

Keeping the Base Happy
As of today, there have been roughly 2.5 to 3 million PlayStation Vitas sold globally.  This means 2.5-3 million buyers of your product that have made a commitment and hopefully a long-term investment.  You'll need to energize the base, as recently seen at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions last month.  The base is typically your early adopters, the fans that have purchased the hardware and ample amount of software on day one.  There is eternal optimism on the long term viability of the system and they are always looking for a reason to defend their purchase and are willing to promote the system by word of mouth.  How does Sony bring those users in and revitalize them?

The first step is a consistent flow of backward compatible titles for the PSP as well as the PS One.  This is not only an additional revenue stream but a much needed factor in Vita adoption.  A large part of why PSP users have not upgraded to the PS Vita are (1) they've installed custom firmware and (2) their UMD discs are rendered useless.  SCEJ did offer a UMD-to-Digital download program but it failed to launch largely due to the negative feedback received about the pricing model.  This makes availability all the more important.  However, games like Final Fantasy Type-0 and Crisis Core from Square Enix are not available in digital format and fans have been clamoring for it since the release of the PS Vita.

[As of 9/29/2012]
PSP digital titles - 392
PSP games on Vita store - 282
PSOne digital titles - 181
PSOne games on Vita store - 73

% PSP moved to Vita = 72%
% PSOne moved to Vita =  40%

Conclusion - the Vita must provide at least 90% parity with titles offered on the PSP digital stores.  By the end of 2012, it should have 360 PSP titles available for download on the PSP games section of the Vita store.  In addition, there must be at least 160 titles PS One titles.  With 90% parity to what exists on the PSP digital store, future buyers of the hardware are assured a decent back catalog of titles.

Pub Fund for Two
One of the most innovative business decisions Sony has made in the last five years is the "Pub Fund".  The "Pub Fund" is a funding initiative where smaller developers are given "funds" to create and co-market new and innovative content for the PS3/PSP/PSN.  Some of the more prominent titles that have been created using the "Pub Fund" have been hits Joe Danger and Tales from Space: About a Blob.  By all accounts, titles produced under this initiative have been a critical and commercial success.

It is time to extend this initiative to the PS Vita.  If a game is given a "Pub Fund" allocation of $2 million to create content for the PSN on the PS3, I propose that this same developer be given an additional $500K-$1 million to port the content to the PS Vita with cross-play/cross-save functions (these allocations are estimations).  This will allow the developer to hire additional resources and convert code in parallel thereby keeping to the original project timeline.

The argument can be made, why not just create exclusive content for the Vita?  The PS3 has already plenty of content available on the PS Store.  Yes.  However, if the marketing and product strategy is to push cross play/buy/save, content must be on both platforms and there must be a top down policy to make this a priority.  As much as I respect and understand Sony's focus on letting the developer create content on the platform it wants to create it on, this will fragment the same user-base it is actively marketing.

Conclusion - Through the "Pub Fund for Two" initiative as well as other creative business deals with larger publishers, Sony must make an internal target of having 75% of PSN content published at the same time for PS3 and Vita by end of 2013.  Even with development and marketing shifting to the PS4, I see that percentage increasing to 90% by end of 2014.

Vita Remote Play - update

One of the biggest factors in my purchase decision for the Vita was Remote Play.  The Vita has the ability to map all input of a Dual Shock 3 controller so the possibilities were endless in trying to remotely play PS3 titles.  Interest peaked when custom firmware users uploaded videos of the Vita playing titles like Battlefield 3 and Red Dead Redemption.  There is still hope for this type of technology but it was sure slow to get off the ground.

The release of the Vita remote play saw limited support and by limited I mean using PSP remote play as a common denominator (ie Lair, Pixel Junk Monsters, etc).  Suffice to say, the technology did not improve as it felt like a copy and paste effort from the PSP to the Vita.  During TGS (Tokyo Game Show) 2011, Sony's Shuhei Yoshida demonstrated their flagship title Killzone 3 through Vita's updated Remote Play.  It wasn't perfect but it was indicative of things to come.  Unfortunately, it wasn't until Q3 of 2012 that this potential was realized.  Four PS3 titles were patched.  Ico and Shadow of the Colossus HD and God of War Collection (GoW I and GoW II).  The only title that I've tried myself has been Ico and can confirm that the execution of Remote Play has been relatively flawless if using the PS3 has an access point.  There isn't data yet that measures the latency of control input of the main character but it's been minimal to next to nothing.  It greatly helps connectivity if the Vita is in close proximity to the PS3 and in my case, it was less than 10 feet.  

Image quality, on the other hand, could improve.  Even in the camera shots provided below, it's evident that there's still a bit of artifacts on the screen.  It's not enough to detract you from playing this title through Remote Play but with better hardware in future PlayStation consoles, I an only see this improving with the integration of Gaikai.

(screenshots of Ico HD)

Vita game recommendations

Platforming (Action/Adventure)


The above games come highly recommended not only critically but also praised by the gaming community as a whole.  

Provided below are Official Thread links on NeoGAF (a community that I'm actively apart of).  This will provide you with ample information about the premise of the game and it's features.

Gravity Rush
Uncharted Golden Abyss
Little Big Planet Vita
Rayman Origins