7 reasons why the Vita will be my last Playstation

Sony, why have you forsaken me? I was such an adamant defender of your brand. Now like the battered housewife, I have come to realize it is time to leave. Yes, unless they can pull a rabbit out of their hat, the Vita will be my last Playstation system. They’ve really done it to themselves by failing to keep up with the competition, or just outright disappointing their fans. Here’s seven reasons why Sony and I are getting a divorce.

1. Openly embracing the anti-used movement
Whenever you buy a used game, an single tear rolls down Kevin Buttle’s face. Sony has chosen to openly adopt a stance against the purchase of used games. They haven’t gone as far as to outright ban them. Instead they act like the greedy troll under the bridge, demanding you pay the toll to cross into the land of multiplayer. In fairness, PSN is free to use and you could argue paying full price is like paying to use it.

Sony’s real beef is with Gamestop for not profit sharing on used sales. So their automatic response is to begin treating penniless college students like greasy pirates. Talk about robbing Peter because you weren’t paid by Paul.

2. Banning the use of third party peripherals
I loved Beatles Rock Band. Even though I was never a huge fan of rhythm games, I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It’s the Beatles for god’s sake. How could you not love it? That is until my fun stopped, when Sony decided my guitar was not officially sanctioned by their powers that be.

The Guitar Hero/Rock Band official guitars were too expensive at the time. Bought a used official one and it didn’t work so I returned it and got the Nyko Frontman. It worked great and it was cheap. What more could a guy want? I spent hours jamming with John, Paul, George, and Ringo on that thing. Then a firmware update ended my fun. Secretly tucked away in the code, like an evil little gremlin, was something that killed my Frontman. Sorry, Sony said, you have to buy the official guitar to keep rocking. So ended my tour as the fifth Beatle.

3. Firmware updates that do nothing
Sony releases a lot of firmware updates. That’s cool, everyone does. You should see how many updates my Linux box wants me to download. Hence my quest to find an ISP that offers unlimited bandwidth, that’s not operated out of a boiler room. The problem is that each time they release an update, you can’t go online until you download it. Then you find out you wasted precious bandwidth because update does nothing at all. It just gives so vague promise of improving stability. That’s all well and good but why do you have to kill my online features for that?

4. Firmware updates that break your system
Also known as removing features you paid for. Awhile back, somebody figured out how to exploit the Other OS feature to create a rudimentary jailbreak for the PS3. It didn’t do anything besides allow the system to run simple home brews. However, Sony freaked and decided to remove Other OS. While not many put Linux on it, Sony had advertised it as a selling point, only to take it away.

Another classic case is the perpetual fear that Sony’s latest firmware will murder your system. When Sony promised in-game XMB in Firmware 2.4, gamers jumped for joy. They could now check their shiny new trophies without quitting the game. They gleefully loaded the new firmware, booted up their PS3, and nothing. Dead as a door nail. Nice job lads.

5. Sony loves messing around with hardware…
The Playstation 3 went through a lot of incarnations. Fat, Fat with software PS2, Fat with no PS2, Slim, and a rumoured even slimmer. The original PS3 was a beast of a system, a gamer’s dream. Robust media capability, full Playstation 2 comparability, the works. Over the years it’s been slowly whittled down. You lost your PS2, your SACD, Other OS, flash reader, two of your USB ports, but hey, at least you got HDMI bitstreaming. Sure the originals were expensive but an awful lot was sacrificed to get the price down. A lot of what made the PS3 such a great system. Now it’s just another sheep in the crowd.

Sony did the same with the PSP, releasing three full redesigned. Then they said “to hell with it” and made the worst handheld disaster since the Virtual Boy: the infamous PSP Go. A download-only system that was awkward to use and incompatible with UMD discs. Most PSP games weren’t even available for download at the time. It was a big flop for the company.

You’d think they’d learn but Sony threw us another curve ball with the Vita. You thought expensive, proprietary memory cards died with the PS2? Think again. The Vita’s cards cost double what comparable MicroSD cards cost, and offered lackluster performance. With no internal memory, these pricey addons were mandatory. One step forward with the PS3’s standard hard drives, two steps back with the Vita.

6. …but ignores the software.
Piracy didn’t kill the PSP. Crappy games killed the PSP. Now the same thing is happening to the Vita. According to my own unscientific studies, there’s a direct correlation between how bad your game is and how little people are willing to pay good money for it. The PSP was a system with high hopes. Stellar hardware and great launch titles. Then the games dried up quicker than a Nevada rain storm. The ones that did get released were generic and laughable in quality.

The Vita, a stunning piece of hardware started with good games. Then they dried up, to be replaced with laughably bad ones too. Except this time, it’s gotten worse. Resistance is an important first party franchise for Sony. So you’d think they’d put some effort into the Vita game. Well, not exactly. Resistance: Burning Skies received a pitiful 60% aggregated review score on Metacritic. Out of 455 reviews of Sony published games, it ranks in the bottom 50. It’s also the lowest rated title from a major Sony franchise on any PlayStation system, and ranks 12th on the Vita. That’s frankly embarrassing.

The PS3 almost suffered the same fate until a pair of small, art house games called Uncharted and Metal Gear Solid 4 got the ball rolling.

7. You can fry a mean egg on it
Sony and their fanboys love to gloat over how reliable the PS3 is over the Xbox 360. Ha, you got the red ring of death, what a n00b. At least that’s what they used to say before the fat PS3s started biting the dust en mass. They suffer from the exact same problem as Microsoft’s console. They just take a lot longer to cook themselves to death. In this case it’s bad airflow as opposed to a wimpy fan. There’s no greater heart break than seeing that yellow light flash and hearing that dreaded triple beep. That’s karma for you. Shouldn’t have made fun of your friend’s 360.

So you begrudgingly sent it back to Sony, paid somewhere in the ballpark of $150 like I did, and got it back. Six months later and it was toast again. So much for the professional repair job. Another $300 spent to buy a new PS3 Slim that had all those great features removed. Ever want to know how your dog felt after getting neutered? Become a Playstation fan.