Sony Failed with the PS Vita

I just read an article that annoyed me so much that it’s inspired my entire column for this week.

Usually I sit around waiting for a bolt of inspiration to strike, but this time I feel like I’ve just been trolled – and not by an anonymous forum troll either; by an actual, presumably respectable, journalist.

The article in question is regarding the highly-anticipated PS Vita, and makes the bold statement that the external battery pack for it is “genius” and “a real game changer”. It begins with a cute little anecdote about a group of gaming journalists at dinner, where one of them checks their phone and announces the news that the Vita will have an external battery pack.

They immediately exclaim in chorus about how grand it is, and then facepalm (literally) about how “everyone is going to be so pissed”. The sheer volume of smug, self-congratulation dripping from the page makes me wonder how they could have possibly eaten dinner with their heads so far up each other’s arses.

Well, mighty overlords of the video game industry, I am pissed – and in this column I’m going to tell you, common folk who aren’t cool enough to spend a night out with friends on your smartphone, why you should be too.

For those of you who don’t already know, due to its demanding hardware, the PS Vita has a meager 2-3 hours of battery life, and consumers will have the option to purchase an additional external battery pack which clips onto the device to extend their playing time.

The main point the writers seem attached to, is the sheer power of the device, -which in their eyes makes the three hour battery life totally acceptable. While they don’t make the comparison, it feels like they’re drooling over the handheld in the same way a group of men will drool over a Ferrari Enzo, not caring much about needing to fill up every 200km.

If this metaphor has you nodding in agreement, you may want to grab a smartphone and take your seat at the dinner table. Last I checked, a Ferrari doesn’t have to be attached to the petrol station to drive it, nor does it take hours to fill up. I guarantee if every time you drove 200km you were forced to take a 3 hour pit stop in the middle of the Transkei, you’ll be making your next cross-country trip in a Prius.

But power isn’t everything, and certainly not in a handheld. Sure powerful hardware is great and everyone loves it, but if you think a product ends ther,e you aren’t seeing the forest for the trees. Sony is making a handheld device; an external battery pack, as well as the need for one, negates the purpose of a handheld.

A cumbersome battery is not what you want in a portable device, but that’s not even the problem here – the problem is the necessity for one.

You’re being forced to pay extra to get a battery life you should have gotten off the shelf, and when you do that, you lose the portability your device should have had anyway. It’s a lose-lose situation, except Sony wins every time.

The writer of the aforementioned article compares the situation to a netbook, a powered-down computer with generally pretty lackluster features when compared to their equivalents. He points out that if you want a big hard-drive or a DVD writer, you have to pay extra for it. The obvious flaw in his logic, however, is that you don’t want any of that. Why would you?

A netbook’s function is e-mail, a bit of browsing and perhaps using MS Office. It sacrifices power because it’s not designed to be powerful; it’s designed to be portable and efficient. This is the flaw in the design of the Vita. As a handheld, it should never have been designed with raw power in mind.

The necessary functions of a handheld should have been prioritized, and the power of the device compromised to achieve those goals. We have home consoles for raw power, we have desktops. When we’re sitting in an airport for six hours or going on a long bus trip, that’s not what we need, or even want.

The article mentioned argues that “most Americans use their handhelds at home anyway”, an argument so bad my brain still hurts. Either he was really short on valid points, or most Americans like to spend hundreds of dollars to keep themselves occupied on the toilet.

The bottom line is this: you should not be paying for things that should have been included in the first place. Everyone who reads my columns knows I rag on Apple quite a lot, but my biggest qualm with them is every time a new generation of one of their products comes out, the new generation “upgrade” is something which should have been on the previous generation anyway.  In this case it’s even worse however, as the “upgrade” is actually somewhat of a downgrade as well.

Companies, and we as consumers, need to move away from prioritizing power above all else. A balance between all necessary elements is almost always the most desirable outcome; the desire for more power should not compromise other elements of equal importance.

Do you think a two-three hour battery life is more than enough? Do you update your Facebook status at dinner?  Come yell at me in the forums, or comment below!