Sony is readying PlayStation Vita’s first color variations. Crystal White is due out on June 28, to be followed on August 30 by a special Hatsune Miku variation.
Will you be buying the new PS Vita in white?
Take a look at some photos of the White PS Vita here:
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for the Vita will be arriving on the portable in late June, publisher Konami has announced.
The Vita version comes with almost all the bells and whistles from its big brother console offering, as well as Kojima Productions’ Transfarring system, allowing players to share data across PS3 and Vita versions.
What MGS HD Vita is lacking, however, is MGS: Peace Walker.
Whether it’s due to space limitations or because including it would be at odds with the PSP version sitting on the PSN store for £15.99, it’s still a shame that it’s absent.
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection Trailer
The long awaited Skype App for the PS Vita is now available to download from the UK and European countries.
Skype for Playstation(R)Vita is now available to download from PlayStation(R)Store; grab it now and connect with your friends and family around the world.
Stay in touch with friends and family with Skype on your PS Vita system.
- Video call on the go with Skype for PlayStation Vita.
- Make Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls right from your PS Vita.
- Call anyone else on Skype for free – whether they’re also on a PS Vita system, a smartphone or a computer.
- Talk face-to-face or show friends what’s around you with the front and rear cameras.
- Make and receive calls to mobiles and landlines at Skype’s great low rates.
- Take part in a conference call and join the conversation with your group of friends.
- Download it now for free from PlayStation Store.
Note:
To get started with Skype, you’ll need an account; visit skype.com to sign up.
To add and manage contacts, you’ll need to sign in to Skype on any other Skype compatible device or on a computer. Changes to your contact list will then sync automatically when you sign in to Skype on your PS Vita.
You’ll get the best Skype experience when using a Wi-Fi connection.
Your operator may charge you extra for using your data connection. We recommend using a Wi-Fi connection or an unlimited data plan.
Voice and video calls will require a Wi-Fi connection in some countries.
This application does not recognise the network level chat parental control for Sony Entertainment Network sub-accounts.
Use of Skype is subject to Skype’s Terms of Use and Privacy Statement.
One of the Mortal Kombat devs openly shared his view of loading times on the PS Vita. All it took was one word “vomitive”. This is what Derek Kirtzic had to say at PAX East 2012 that closed it’s curtains last week. He went on to say that he was pulling out all the stops to make sure that Mortal Kombat for the Vita would not fall into the same pitfalls.
This is great news for the upcoming Vita title. Kirtzic went on to state “We’re running at 60 FPS, and it plays exactly like the console. There is no miss in button inputs, no button lag, it feels exactly like it, and it looks great. We don’t have static backgrounds; we have fully animated backgrounds just like we did on the consoles.”
“A lot of the Vita games out there are only running at 30 frames per second. It was mandatory that we made sure we stayed at 60 frames per second.”
“It was never an option. It has to run at 60 frames per second, it’s a fighting game. That’s what it has to do.”
He was obviously referring to games such as Uncharted: Golden Abyss that does indeed take rather a long time to load up on start up. Having said that, if you look at Uncharted 3 on the VITA’s big brother that takes even longer to get going.
Software aside, hardware is more often than not, the real culprit for these loading times, but 512MB RAM and 4 cores is pretty much the G-spot for loading. Hence, loading times are bad not because of the PS Vita itself, but rather because developers are still adjusting to the new mobile advances.
Sinobi have tweeted a really unexpected bit of information this morning concerning an unheard PS Vita game. Nothing had been mentioned of this title previously and further insight in the game is said to be incoming on the 10th of May. Although the details provided were rather sparse, we were at least tweeted to the following information: The story will involve magicians combined with a “concept of evolved co-op battles” and “high spec grahics for creating a realistic fantasy world”.
「魔法使いの物語」「進化した共闘の概念」「ハイスペックで描かれる真実のファンタジー」をキーワードにしたPSV用新作「SOUL SACRIFICE / ソウルサクリファイス」。5月10日に東京国際フォーラムにて制作発表会開催。
— 忍 (@sinobintage) April 18, 2012
The Japanese Playstation Site is home to a dedicated page for the game so expect this to be announced as a first PS Vita party title.
Scanned images have also gone viral on the net and they would lead us to believe that we will be in for a Monster Hunter style game.
Sonic 4 Episode II is spinning it’s way towards us as you read this. One of the most prominent features you will encounter in this new venture is Collaborative Gameplay between Sonic and Tails. Sonic can cooperate with his mate Tails anywhere in the game, flaunting three combo moves to slaughter past some of the more cumbersome challenges.
The first of these is the Copter Combo (which does indeed date back to Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles) allowing you to control Tails as a helicopter, hoisting Sonic up, up and away to platforms unreachable on one’s lonesome.
Not only can Tails take to the air but he can also dive underwater with the Submarine Combo. This is a real game changer given Sonic hasn’t passed his 10 metre swimming badge yet. Tails makes reaching those ever needed air bubbles a lot less of a rush job.
The final Combo has been touted the Rolling Combo where the pair join forces to create a single ball, rolling at even faster break-neck speeds and letting you take all of your angst out on not only Sonic’s enemies, but also the environments (have they taken a leaf out of Battlefield’s book here).
So who do we control then? Well, the single player adventure allows you to control Sonic and only control Tails when you feel the need for a bit of Combo Move action. When playing the two-player mode (both online and local) then each character shall be controlled be a different player, working together as a team.
The devs have said that we can expect some more collaborative game play features but that they were still trade secret for the moment.
Obviously, this is 2012 we are talking about so expect a stunning new graphics and physics engine making the game look so much better, whilst keeping the oldskool Mega Drive feel.
Sonic 4 Episode II will be arriving on the Playstation Network on May 15.
It has also been announced for the Xbox Live Arcade (May 16)
And is expected to be released for IOS and PC also in May, together with a June/July release for Android and Windows smartphones.
Facebook got off to a rather rough start when it launched on the PS Vita. Everyone, eager to get touchy feely with the console version of the Social App was gutted when the app was swiftly removed from the PS Store. Not only that but anyone who had downloaded the app simply got an error message.
Well the Facebook app eventually made it back to PS Store and you can now download it to your PS VITA and what’s more, it decided to get a bit of a Facelift yesterday, under the guise of 1.01.
The new firmware boasts the following new features:
- PS Vita users can now use Pages and upload photos. The ability to tag photos is also in the update.
- Support is also provided for the Vita’s system languages.
Unfortunately the “Pirate” language setting that was recently added to the browser version of Facebook has not been included. Hopefully you’ll be able to “hoist portaits” rather than “upload photos” on your PS Vita, before you can say “Pieces of eight”.
We recently mentioned that Europeans would be able to tide their patience a tad thanks to a demo of Gravity Rush dropping on the 30th of May.
The full PS Vita game will follow this up on the 12th of June, worldwide and to prepare for this Sony have just announced some pre-order incentives.
This is known as the “Army Volume” pack:
- A special military costume
- Two extra challenge missions
- Two extra quest missions
This pack was released in Japan on March 24, which was swiftly followed up by the announcement of another pack including a maid’s outfit. Let’s hope this also reaches our shores here in the UK.
Please check out the screenshots of the special Army Volume and let us know what you think.
It was a dark and dismal day when it was announced that CCP’s upcoming shooter Dust 514 would only be making it onto the PS Vita as a companion app rather than a full-blown game. If you were disappointed, to say the least, well I hope this sheds a bit of excitement on the matter. It would now appear that the developers have had a change of heart and although they are still not providing us with the whole game on the PS Vita, hints now point to the PS Vita being employed as a controller.
CCP’s Chief Marketing Officer, David Reid, blogged that “Once you get your hands on the Vita, you can imagine it as a controller for your Dust experience. Suddenly you can think about all the things you can do with that screen.”
“Our first steps will be cohort apps – the idea of taking a certain amount of the [game's] admin on the go. But the opportunity is massive in terms of what could be on that screen while you’re playing Dust 514,”.
With this mention of cohort apps, could this mean that CCP are even considering set companion pieces for the PlayStation Vita or even Smart phones? This could well be the case, what with the latest barrage of phone ports such as Max Payne and Mass Effect.
All I can say is that this would be one smart move by Sony if they want to kick some Dust 514 in the face of the upcoming Wii U (or Wii Entertainment System, if the rumours are true).