Vita – Week One Update

OK, I’m getting a little ahead of myself, as technically tomorrow around 3PM’ish will be the end of a full week, but I really couldn’t resist myself.

Today I’m offering up three random, but heavily focused, tidbits for your viewing pleasure.

Battery Life
For a portable device, how much time away from a charger is an important question.  According to Sony’s official blog (Ultimate Vita FAQ):

Q: What is PS Vita’s battery life?
A: Officially, PS Vita is rated at approximately 3 to 5 hours of gaming, 5 hours of video playback, and 9 hours of music playback. Recharging the battery from 0 percent will take approximately 2.5 hours.

From a gaming perspective, you’ll notice that the most graphically intense games such as UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss are slightly more demanding on battery life, while simpler games such as Escape Plan are less demanding. To further maximize battery life, you can employ measures such as reducing the screen’s brightness or deactivating Wi-Fi. By and large, PlayStation employees who have used PS Vita extensively in the real world have praised the unit’s battery life – if you pick up PS Vita on day one, be sure to let us know what your experiences are.

3-5 hours is about right, except I feel like I’m hitting the lower end. I know that feel is not tangible, and while I haven’t done any experiments, I’m fairly certain that I’m not getting 8-10 hours.

Cross Play – Hustle Kings
I’m not sure what time Sony got around to updating the store last night (at 10:45PM I gave up), but this morning I was able to start a free download of Hustle Kings. I picked up this game on the PS3 long ago as part of a sale, or PS+ incentive, or some such, and never really played that much. Sony was nice enough to offer it up for free to owners of the PS3 version, which is very cool in my book. Hooray for Sony! Bravo!

Remote Play
I have messed around a little with Remote Play and much like Remote Play with the PSP; it is a little hit or miss.

For starters, Remote Play will not work over 3G. I understand data limitations and required bandwidth utilization, but it sure would be nice to kick off my PS3 from anywhere, go to the store, and download whatever it was that tickled my fancy, in order for said download to be on the PS3 when I arrived home.

What games with Remote Play? I experimented some with download games, and found that PSOne Classics (specifically Final Fantasy V), PixelJunk Monsters, PixelJunk Shooter (but not the sequel), and High Stakes Bowling all played successfully.

I doubt that developers will have any incentive to go back and address older games via a Remote Play patch; hopefully someone of the newer titles will eventually support this underutilized feature.

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2 thoughts on “Vita – Week One Update”

  1. Hey JC,

    I don’t think I’m getting emails from my CG account… Could you check and let me know?

    Thanks,

    Kevin

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