Game Consoles

Sony, a Japanese consumer electronics manufacturer serves around the globe with their innovative products. Even though they are one of the highly preferred brand in the UK market, they became famous with their trademark Playstation gaming devices. After the era of Playstations started, gamers found their fantasy of gaming reached the next level.  Regardless the advantages of the home gaming, nowadays the demand of portable gaming devices has increased as they can be played on the go. Sony made a great contribution with their PSP range of portable gaming devices. It became a massive hit in the game console market, with the mind blowing sales of more than 40 million devices. The latest release in this range of gaming consoles is the new PS Vita, a portable game console which gives you a fantastic gaming experience on the go. As the technology grows, the gamers have started expecting more out of the latest game consoles. Let’s see how this Playstation fulfills today’s gaming requirements.

Style and Looks

In the first look, Playstation Vita looks like a usual Sony PSP and makes us think that this is just another portable game console in the PSP series. Performance and features talks more than the looks of this Sony portable gaming device. While comparing Sony Playstation Vita by just looks with other game consoles in the market, it looks bulkier and bigger than the rivals. The end to end length is 7.2 inches, top to bottom height is 3.3 and depth of 0.73 inch makes it hefty. We can say it is a curvy game console as it is oval shape. It looks exactly like a normal handy game console and we can’t say it is stylish after looking at portable game consoles from other brands.

Feel the game with capacitive touch screen

Sony Playstation Vita has a 5 inch capacitive touch screen with OLED display which is very responsive to play the game even without the help of the keys. It is much more comfortable to play in the touch screen than playing with the buttons as it really gives a lively gaming experience. For example, while playing Uncharted – Golden Abyss in Playstation Vita the carbon rubbings can be rubbed as if you rub manually using the capacitive touch screen. In this handheld game console, the rear touch pad is one of the most attractive features. It can be used in games which are compatible and ensures the maximum gaming comfort. The six axis motion sensing system, senses your moves and helps getting a realistic gaming experience, specially while playing racing games.

Hardware and Graphics Quality

More than the style and looks, we expect a game console to have great hardware to support hardcore and hassle free gaming. Sony made no mistake in the PS Vita’s hardware. It has the powerful ARM Cortex- A9 core processor which is the fastest quad core processor and fastest among any handheld game console. The video RAM of 128MB and 512MB RAM buffers the games in a better speed. SGX543MP4+ Graphics processing unit is one of the high quality GPU available these days produces extreme quality graphics. The resolution of this gaming beast is 640 x 480, which is one of the great resolutions available for the handheld devices. All the above features help PS Vita to perform to the high level sophisticated gaming device.

All in one media centre

We often wish our loveable gaming device to be useful for our other media needs. Sony Playstation Vita Handheld Console  fulfills that wish with its handful of media features. This handheld portable device comes with two cameras, where the front camera for skype and video calling, as well as to show yourself to your friends while playing a game witht them and the rear camera for taking still and capturing videos. However, you can also take pictures with the front camera and video recording. Make sure your friends don’t tease you with your face expression after losing a race or any other game with them, as they will be watching you through the front camera. When it comes to camera quality, we always expect Sony to give the best with its trademark quality. But we are really disappointed with the camera quality of Sony Playstation Vita. Both of the cameras are with 0.3 megapixel resolution, which is not a real Sony product should have. Sony must have thought that whoever buys the device, they are going to be a hardcore gamer who don’t bother about the camera and other media features which is not into games.

This is the era of social networking, people started expecting social networking applications and support in every multimedia devices. Why not the gamers have that capability in their game consoles? Just like other flavours of Playstation game consoles, Playstation Vita has support for social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. Photo sharing applications like flickr are available with to share your photo with others from this game console. Just like Playstation 3 you can create your own party to chat with your friends in other Playstation devices or join party created by others. It also allows you to voice chat as well as text chat during games, so it would be more interactive and give a lively feeling that you are playing with that person for real.

The inbuilt microphone as well as the front speakers allows the user to voice chat even without any microphones, yeah sometimes we don’t like headphones hanging around our face and ties the game console with our body. It’s a great thought by Sony that they built-in a microphone for a wireless gaming experience. Anyhow, you may want to use a heaphone for personal hearing on the move, so there is a headphone jack given to connect your headset. It has Sony’s near, an application gives the provision to update your location, your gaming achievements, and sending public messages and interact with other gamers in your locality. It is totally helpful for social gaming as well as making new friends to compete in games through Playstation Vita. This is one of the most innovative features of this gaming beast. We are sure that this is going to be an appealing one for the social gaming fans.

Keys and Controls

As we mentioned earlier, the PS Vita is pretty heftier than a standard handheld gaming device. Even though it is said negative, it is positive in the usability point of view. The button positioning and the well placed shoulder ensures the comfort of gaming while playing action and adventure games like Army Corps of Hell and Gravity Rush. The rear touchpad is the most welcomed feature in Playstation Vita portable gaming device. The index fingers will be used more with the rear touch pad. Gamers had a problem while throwing grenades in shooting games, as they might get open to the enemy fire while we target and throw, but with the help of the touchpad it can be done accurately without facing such difficulty of being shot by the enemies. Even while playing turn-based games, the rear touch pad is very helpful to launch multiple targets in a single blow.

The comfort of gaming takes the new and unique level, as Sony gifted dual analogue sticks. It was a dream of any gamer who have experience with the predecessors of Sony Playstation Vita with a single analogue stick. The up, down, right and left buttons are in the left and the triangle, circle, cross and square buttons are in the right. There is a Playstation button located below the left analogue stick. The 5 inch capacitive touch screen senses multi touch and gives an accurate control over the game, as you can swipe, tap and pinch with your finger tips. It is very fast and sensitive enough to give a speedy response for any action done with the touch screen.

Connectivity

With this newest member of Sony Portable gaming devices family, you can get a two modes to connect the device to the internet. There are two models of this Playstation handheld game console available, they are Playstation Vita Wi-Fi and Playstation Vita Wi-Fi and 3G. The Wi-Fi only version can connect to the internet using only with an available Wi-Fi connection and the Wi-Fi and 3G version can access internet with both 3G with a compatible mobile network and Wi-Fi. There is a slight difference in price between these two models.

Verdict

There is no doubt that Playstation Vita is an ultimate gaming device, with high quality display and controls. The 5 inch OLED screen with higher frames per second gives an impressive gaming experience. Near will be inspired by any gamer who loves interactive gaming than playing single. Rear touch panel is the other cherry on the cake, as we mentioned earlier than this is the most useful feature next to the dual analogue stick. Even though all these features make it a recommended game console, it is pretty expensive when we compare the price of its rivals. Overall Sony Playstation Vita is a great choice to have an immersive gaming experience on the go.

Sony PlayStation Vita Game Console – Technical Specification Table