√Letter On Vita Vs. PS4?

[Cynthia-Roses]

1 hour ago, Valyrious said:

The Vita is 544p? Jesus that's significantly worse.

 

Yeah it's 960x544. Sadly you may be thinking that perhaps it just hasn't aged well since it came out in 2011 in Japan... Well I assure you... The Vita was approaching being dated upon its release as well. In Dec. 2011 when it was released Samsung was already ready to ship out the Galaxy S3 smartphone in only 2 months. The American unit wouldn't arrive until the same time as said smartphone and look at the spec difference:

 

Vita

 

• 512MB RAM
• 544p Display at 220 ppi
• 1.5GHz Quad-Core processor

Galaxy S3

 

• 1GB RAM
• 720p Display at 306 ppi
• 1.4Ghz Quad-Core Processor

Within only a year, the Vita was being demolished by smartphones in terms of specs. Look at some of the phones from 2012-2013 range:

 

• Galaxy S4: 1080p, 2GB RAM, far superior graphics chip and processor
• iPhone 5: 640p, 1GB RAM, PowerSGX graphics chip which surpassed the Vita
• Nexus 4: 720p, 2GB RAM, superior adreno 320 graphics chip.

You get the point, but one of the main reasons the Vita tanked is because smartphones surpassed it by huge strides in only a few months after its release. This coupled with design flaws that were anti consumer (Proprietary charger/memory card) and using tech that was on its way out within the Vita such as:

 

• 3G support only in the cellular models. 4G LTE was on the rise and slated to achieve over 50% adoption rate within the next 2-3 years. 3G wasn't a future proof design.
• The graphics chip doesn't support a lot of the newer versions of engines including Unreal 4 which was known to become the standard sooner or later. Sony knew about it, and had they gone with a slightly newer chip it would have supported Unreal 4. As a result Vita versions of games have to be downgraded to work on Unreal 3 or Vita ports are scrapped all together.

 

Ultimately yes, I went on a tangent there but bringing it back on topic:

 

The Vita is kind of an odd creature as it was created during a time period where the devices around it all jumped forward leaps and bounds in such a short amount of time, making the Vita not as attractive because you were essentially paying a huge price for a system that just wasn't up to snuff with smartphones which took a huge bite out of the handheld gaming market.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

2 hours ago, Valyrious said:

The Vita is 544p? Jesus that's significantly worse.

And since you only realized it now, it doesn't seem to affect anything, though

[ars]

1 hour ago, Valyrious said:

The Vita is 544p? Jesus that's significantly worse.

 

Not really, for the record Nintendo 3DS main screen is 400x240px (or 800x240 if you want a headache). 960x544 works just fine for the 5" screen. I find it funny half the Vita games run even at that resolution and during some four years I don't think I've seen a single comment where a gamer uninformed about the fact would complain about the resolution of the Vita game they played. The resolution seems quite adequate for the screen size especially when the vast majority can't notice a difference even when it's dropped lower, don't you think?

 

In any case, those specs were high end in 2011 when Vita was first published. Apple's best selling iPhone 4S from the same year sported a 640x960px resolution. It's just a number anyway, GTAs and any of the PS2 ports are 720x480 interlaced internally, just upscaled to 1080p. That's what you get with PSTV too, upscale. I guess you'd be happy your Vita games run at 1080p, regardless

 

2 hours ago, Cynthia-Roses said:

It wasn't always but in recent years it's sadly become the case and everyone started doing it so we sort of started accepting it. Though I can admit there are a few products that break the trend. Apple's Macbooks generally get close to 7-8 hours of battery life, and the OpenPandora actually achieves 10 hours of battery life regardless of what you're doing on it and that was a device made by a small team. Some of these big AAA manufacturers need to start investing in better battery tech. I would gladly pay a little more for extended battery life, considering many of the 2000mAH batteries that people sell for the Dualshock 4 are only like $5-10, they could easily afford to start sticking bigger batteries in systems.

 

Not going to argue on matters of taste but working in IT this one I need to set straight. There are no products that break the trend. Any sort of processing uses electricity and that electricity comes straight off the battery. The battery in turn provides exactly the amount of electricity it has. If it's a 2000mAh battery made in China and the charge is 1750mAh you get exactly 1750mAh out of it. If it's a 2000mAh battery made in Japan and the charge is 1750mAh you get exactly 1750mAh out of it.

 

The electricity comes from chemically reactive lithium-ion compound (most commonly LIB), which is the current industry standard. The characteristics of the compound, including it's density, are a constant. A 3000mAh Li-ion battery is 50% bigger than a 2000mAh Li-ion battery, a 4000mAh battery twice the size. That's why the battery size is limited to make the portable electronics, well, portable. Let me remind you Vita faced criticism it doesn't fit well in your pocket on release, no one was going to make it even bigger.

 

OpenPandora achieves 10 hours of battery life because all the hardware is rated half or less compared to Vita. Pandora sports a 0,6GHz 1-core main processor and a 1-core 430MHz assistant, whereas Vita sports a quad-core 444MHz at full clock. Pandora sports 256MB of LPDDR RAM clocked at 333Mhz, Vita 512MB, but it also has 128MB VRAM that has some ~15GB/s bandwidth. Finally, Pandora's GPU is a dual-core PowerVR 530 SGX clocked at 110MHz, whereas Vita's GPU is another quad-core PowerVR 543SGXMP4+ clocked at 222MHz max. Actually even the aforementioned iPhone 4S used "only" a dual-core GPU PowerVR chip.

 

In any case, if you look at the math behind the specs it's pretty obvious Pandora uses half as much resources at full capacity compared to Vita, so it's pretty obvious using half as much electricity it'd run twice as long with the same battery. And if anything was ported over from the Vita "as-is", it'd run at half the framerate at best for those ten hours. There's a reason Pandora and any GPX hanhelds mainly run 2D ROMs on emulators. It's never going to run even 3D PS1 games at a good framerate, especially when they're emulated.

 

Apple Macbooks are Intel PCs, Apple abandoned their original hardware design and PPC platform and rebranded Macbooks in 2006. I don't use Macbooks so I don't know if they carry bigger battery packs, but I can vouch for reasons already mentioned a Macbook with a specific Intel processor setup and battery runs exactly the same amount of time an Asus, HP, or whatever would run with the same Intel processor setup and battery. The main gimmick to prolong battery life is to shut down a dedicated GPU and run the integrated Intel HD chip instead, but that kind of defeats the purpose of a gaming system which pretty much only exists to render real-time graphics.

 

However I digress so I'll stop. I'll just recap no one "sort of started accepting" the limited battery life, battery life is a constant and either you accept that fact or you won't but the fact won't change. Consumers complain about the battery life but immediately after complain about performance or the resolution (seen right on this thread), improving either meaning limiting battery life even more. That's a battle a portable electronics producer can't win

[Cynthia-Roses]

1 hour ago, Satoshi Ookami said:

And since you only realized it now, it doesn't seem to affect anything, though

 

I don't think that's a good argument...

 

28 minutes ago, ars said:

Not really, for the record Nintendo 3DS main screen is 400x240px

 

Aiming for a different type of games though. The Vita was originally targeting an audience that wanted console experiences on the go. 240p isn't much for that.

 

29 minutes ago, ars said:

960x544 works just fine for the 5" screen. I find it funny half the Vita games run even at that resolution and during some four years I don't think I've seen a single comment where a gamer uninformed about the fact would complain about the resolution of the Vita game they played. The resolution seems quite adequate for the screen size especially when the vast majority can't notice a difference even when it's dropped lower, don't you think?

 

Eh yes and no. To some of us more techie guys/girls like myself... The screen resolution is noticable. When you stare at 5" touch screens all day that are in 1080p or 720p and you look at a non-HD one... It shows after a while. Maybe a few years ago we wouldn't have noticed, but in today's day and age where smartphones are pushing past 1440p? 544p is pretty weak. Sony should have pushed for a 720p display.

 

31 minutes ago, ars said:

In any case, those specs were high end in 2011 when Vita was first published. Apple's best selling iPhone 4S from the same year sported a 640x960px resolution.

 

Going to have to disagree, as someone who sold phones and is pretty informed on phones the Vita was actually fairly outdated only a month or so after it was released. The Galaxy S3 pushed 720p only 2 months after the Japanese release of the Vita. 640p is quite a jump up from 544. Not to mention devices with twice the RAM the Vita had were already in the works or just coming out when the Vita hit the market. Ultimately the Vita was actually pretty low end even in 2011. Considering most of the tech innovations to come in 2012 were already well known by the time the Vita hit the market in DECEMBER of 2011, Sony could have easily predicted it would have been outdated. They chose to ignore that though.

 

33 minutes ago, ars said:

It's just a number anyway, GTAs and any of the PS2 ports are 720x480 interlaced internally, just upscaled to 1080p. That's what you get with PSTV too, upscale. I guess you'd be happy your Vita games run at 1080p, regardless

 

Has nothing to do with Root Letter running 1080p natively on the PS4 though...

 

 

[Valyrious]

2 hours ago, Cynthia-Roses said:

 

Yeah it's 960x544. Sadly you may be thinking that perhaps it just hasn't aged well since it came out in 2011 in Japan... Well I assure you... The Vita was approaching being dated upon its release as well. In Dec. 2011 when it was released Samsung was already ready to ship out the Galaxy S3 smartphone in only 2 months. The American unit wouldn't arrive until the same time as said smartphone and look at the spec difference:

 

Vita

 

• 512MB RAM
• 544p Display at 220 ppi
• 1.5GHz Quad-Core processor

Galaxy S3

 

• 1GB RAM
• 720p Display at 306 ppi
• 1.4Ghz Quad-Core Processor

Within only a year, the Vita was being demolished by smartphones in terms of specs. Look at some of the phones from 2012-2013 range:

 

• Galaxy S4: 1080p, 2GB RAM, far superior graphics chip and processor
• iPhone 5: 640p, 1GB RAM, PowerSGX graphics chip which surpassed the Vita
• Nexus 4: 720p, 2GB RAM, superior adreno 320 graphics chip.

You get the point, but one of the main reasons the Vita tanked is because smartphones surpassed it by huge strides in only a few months after its release. This coupled with design flaws that were anti consumer (Proprietary charger/memory card) and using tech that was on its way out within the Vita such as:

 

• 3G support only in the cellular models. 4G LTE was on the rise and slated to achieve over 50% adoption rate within the next 2-3 years. 3G wasn't a future proof design.
• The graphics chip doesn't support a lot of the newer versions of engines including Unreal 4 which was known to become the standard sooner or later. Sony knew about it, and had they gone with a slightly newer chip it would have supported Unreal 4. As a result Vita versions of games have to be downgraded to work on Unreal 3 or Vita ports are scrapped all together.

 

Ultimately yes, I went on a tangent there but bringing it back on topic:

 

The Vita is kind of an odd creature as it was created during a time period where the devices around it all jumped forward leaps and bounds in such a short amount of time, making the Vita not as attractive because you were essentially paying a huge price for a system that just wasn't up to snuff with smartphones which took a huge bite out of the handheld gaming market.

 

Yeah, but the thing about that is you can't go comparing a $200 device to a $600+ smart phone. Which is why I didn't bother comparing my Vita to my $800 phone. Even though both have 5 inch screens, but my phone blows it away in every other category. If Sony created a premium Vita that cost at least $500, I would have no doubt that the quality of the specs would be very fucking good. But not this $200 budget thing.

1 hour ago, Satoshi Ookami said:

And since you only realized it now, it doesn't seem to affect anything, though

I thought 720p was disappointing as it was. 544p is close to 480p territory, which is absolutely pathetic.

 

And yes, I am aware that the 3DS is 240p. I make fun of it constantly for a reason. The Vita still gets destroyed by the 3DS in the public's eye, because the 3DS actually has first party support. The Vita is on life support only because Japanese developers and developers making PS4 games just happen to make games to help fuel the Vita. Which I think everybody here can agree all the games are for the niche or perverted or UndeadWolfs of the world.

[Cynthia-Roses]

1 minute ago, Valyrious said:

Yeah, but the thing about that is you can't go comparing a $200 device to a $600+ smart phone. Which is why I didn't bother comparing my Vita to my $800 phone. Even though both have 5 inch screens, but my phone blows it away in every other category. If Sony created a premium Vita that cost at least $500, I would have no doubt that the quality of the specs would be very fucking good. But not this $200 budget thing.

 

You have to keep in mind though that in the states people were getting phones for $99 on contract so they already had the phone in their hand and then Sony comes along and tries to advertise this thing that is far less powerful than the device you already have in your hand. Point is that most people already had these new high end smartphones out of necessity (because they needed a phone) and thus making the need for the Vita small.

 

Also the Vita was $300 upon release, and Google pumped out the Nexus 4 which surpassed the Vita's specs in mid 2012 (around 3-4 months after it released) for like $350. So the Vita was priced around what you'd pay for a mid-range smartphone which by the next year... Even mid range phones were crushing the Vita's capabilities. You then couple in that phones could do so much MORE than the Vita and it became a no brainer to not get the Vita.

 

It was the system that was lost in a sea of Smartphones and without the stellar first party portable titles like Nintendo had established over the years to support it, it made getting the Vita pointless to many. When few people bought them... It made it less appealing to develop for... Less appealing to develop for meant less games which made less people buy them. The never ending catch 22.

 

The Vita found itself sandwiched between other devices that filled its purpose easier and people already needed anyways for day to day life.

[ars]

1 hour ago, Cynthia-Roses said:

To some of us more techie guys/girls like myself... The screen resolution is noticable. When you stare at 5" touch screens all day that are in 1080p or 720p and you look at a non-HD one... It shows after a while. Maybe a few years ago we wouldn't have noticed, but in today's day and age where smartphones are pushing past 1440p? 544p is pretty weak. Sony should have pushed for a 720p display.

 

[...] as someone who sold phones and is pretty informed on phones the Vita was actually fairly outdated only a month or so after it was released. The Galaxy S3 pushed 720p only 2 months after the Japanese release of the Vita. 640p is quite a jump up from 544. Not to mention devices with twice the RAM the Vita had were already in the works or just coming out when the Vita hit the market. Ultimately the Vita was actually pretty low end even in 2011. Considering most of the tech innovations to come in 2012 were already well known by the time the Vita hit the market in DECEMBER of 2011, Sony could have easily predicted it would have been outdated. They chose to ignore that though.

 

 

Has nothing to do with Root Letter running 1080p natively on the PS4 though...

 

 

 

I was writing my previous reply as you made your previous one, I might've guessed you've sold mobile phones in the past for the dedication you reproduced their advertised (= not actual tested) hardware specs  I can't agree Vita being low end on release. I posted the actual clock rate it runs at and you can see straight away it's underclocked to finetune a balance between battery and performance. Portable consoles are designed to run at full power from the instant they come off standby, mobile electronics are designed to run at idle. There's only one game I ever played on my mobile phone, is it something cool like Freedom Wars? No it's not, it's Pokemon Go, which is a pretty crappy (even more so graphically) GPS tracker at heart. I tried it last summer and it ate my 2014 Xperia battery in three hours at 720p.

 

I already tried explain you it's pure physics in my last post. It's a portable reality resources dictate battery and battery dictates your gaming experience, you live in that circle no matter how cool your advertising materials look. You lose resources to increase battery life because the battery life is a constant. There's nothing Sony (or any other OEM) could do to increase battery life until a commercial appliance for something better than Li-ion is produced. Sony was the first party to commercially release Li-ion battery appliances in 1991, so don't hold your breath...

 

I can see your reasons on screen resolution though, I spend my days watching big size screens so I wouldn't be as sensitive to it. I mentioned in my previous post I've never seen an uninformed user complaining about the resolution and while your opinion being informed won't count, where do you see the effect? In the main GUI (wish half the effort went into the GUI tht went into the hardware setup...)? Or a game?

 

40 minutes ago, Cynthia-Roses said:

Also the Vita was $300 upon release, and Google pumped out the Nexus 4 which surpassed the Vita's specs in mid 2012 (around 3-4 months after it released) for like $350. So the Vita was priced around what you'd pay for a mid-range smartphone which by the next year... Even mid range phones were crushing the Vita's capabilities. You then couple in that phones could do so much MORE than the Vita and it became a no brainer to not get the Vita.

 

3DS being released at $249 US, there was no chance Sony could've gone higher. Actually Sony continuously makes a loss on the console and recoups that in game licensing. Vita is actually the first time Sony didn't go for RISC platform and used ARM and PowerVR just like everyone else, must've been a learning experience for them and cementing the choice PS4 will become just another linux PC, no more OEM. Even Nintendo's handheld is just barely profitable after the current $199 price. I don't understand why you keep comparing consoles to mobile phones. None of the handheld consoles are mobile phones. It's a known fact Apple has some 300% profit margin on their phones, but which games do you play on them? Angry Birds?

 

I pointed out my Xperia with 30% more resolution will lose battery 30% faster at full processing, so where's that superior mobile phone you're going to sell me that lasts five hours at 720p or 1440p continously running 3D real-time rendered graphics at 30fps? I'm guessing it's going to be a phablet but good luck finding one!

 

Anyway, it looks to me your sole purpose lately has been to reinforce yourself going full PS4 now, and there's nothing wrong with that

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

12 hours ago, Cynthia-Roses said:

Maybe a few years ago we wouldn't have noticed, but in today's day and age where smartphones are pushing past 1440p? 544p is pretty weak. Sony should have pushed for a 720p display.

Friendly reminder that Vita is 5 years old, therefore, development started 6-7 years ago.

[Cynthia-Roses]

6 hours ago, Satoshi Ookami said:

Friendly reminder that Vita is 5 years old, therefore, development started 6-7 years ago.

Development for the Vita started around the same time that many of these phones development began.

[ars]

Vita is not a mobile phone

[Cynthia-Roses]

10 minutes ago, ars said:

Vita is not a mobile phone

 

I'm well aware.

 

However mobile phones took a huge bite out of the handheld market and a lot of the Vita's secondary media functions were made obsolete by phones is my point. Point being that phones outperformed what the Vita could do relatively quickly, and even Sony acknowledges that mobile phones ultimately harmed the Vita. The Vita quickly failed to attract a market because many on-the-go people just decided to deal with their phones playing games since they are more powerful, they already had them and the secondary features (watching movies, listening to music) were more convenient via a phone.

[ars]

Mobile phones took a bite out of the handheld market because people don't like to carry multiple electronics in their pockets. Vita goes to your bag not your jacket, it's too big and cumbersome for that. That's the reason why Vita didn't repeat the PSP success, it's not an issue of performance or resolution. If it were then what are you even doing on this site? Shouldn't you be playing your Visual Novels out of all things on your $2000 gaming PC and enjoying your hand drawn JPGs in beautiful 4K on a dual-SLI setup that makes the PS4 cry and go shame in the corner?

 

It just makes no sense to me to compare a $800 apple to a $200 orange, except for the fact you can run something like Mobius Final Fantasy on your phone and notice the base graphical quality won't differ from Vita all that much after all these years. Mobius at least will allow you to set it higher, but surprise, then your "portable" just ran out of juice in two hours. But that's something I've already explained to you

[Satoshi Ookami]

1 hour ago, ars said:

 $800 apple to a $200 orange

That's hella expensive fruit there, man

[crimsonidol38]

 

10 hours ago, ars said:

It just makes no sense to me to compare a $800 apple to a $200 orange, except for the fact you can run something like Mobius Final Fantasy on your phone and notice the base graphical quality won't differ from Vita all that much after all these years. Mobius at least will allow you to set it higher, but surprise, then your "portable" just ran out of juice in two hours. But that's something I've already explained to you

 

That comparison and the pun is great.

 

[Cynthia-Roses]

12 hours ago, ars said:

Mobile phones took a bite out of the handheld market because people don't like to carry multiple electronics in their pockets. Vita goes to your bag not your jacket, it's too big and cumbersome for that.

 

That's sort of the problem. One of them anyways.

 

There were many reasons that phones overtook the Vita, but let's not get any further into that. Let's agree to disagree here and call it quits on this subject because we've deviated from the original topic significantly. I'd prefer to agree to disagree and end it civil because it feels like we are dipping into mockery territory and disrespect. I am trying to be respectful to you and will concede you have perhaps more knowledge on IT than myself. While I know a great deal there is always more to learn, and I appreciate you explaining things to me.

 

However I am asking perhaps a little less... Patronizing in the future?

 

I apologize if it came off as I was insulting you, that is never my intention and I hope that much is obvious.

Edited December 22, 2016 by Cynthia-Roses
Added something.

[ars]

No intention to have ever sounded disrespectful, my sole purpose was to counter arguments said on the thread without any personal remarks given (or taken) whatsoever  But you as OP asking whether to go Vita or PS4 for Root Letter, then spending the rest of the thread downplaying Vita, your reasons to do that are beyond me. It's a VN and to be honest a first-generation GPX would suffice. It's not like a VN is resources heavy or suffers any from slightly less resolution... Debating platfoms needs to strike a fine tuned balance where you can keep intelligently discussing it and doesn't degrade into a platform war, and if you lose your focus and make careless remarks it will always lead there. That's how it has been for millions of threads and that's how it's going to be for millions more.

 

If you look at the first page it was quite civil and all the posts were weighing in the pros and cons of PS4 and Vita (which is what you asked for us to do). I guess I shouldn't have mentioned Apple for it's customer base and opened up a Pandora's Box of popcorn time, it was only meant to weigh in the critical mass Apple has so something silly like the Lightning connector (which is little more than a USB hack to charge for overpriced adapters) wouldn't really hurt their business. But Vita and proprietary USB connectors and memory cards which cost you an arm and a leg, I'm going to make a bold claim that was at least a couple million unit sales they lost right there. Sony did have their reasons trying to prevent another hack fest like the PSP became, of course.

 

In any case, as Vita turns five years old it definitely won't carry even third party support more than 2-3 years at best, if it wasn't before NOW it indeed is going obsolete. It'll probably also go down in history as the last non-Nintendo dedicated gaming handheld produced by the big three, as Android phones take over. That's a shame, because Sony advertised bringing the HD console experience on handhelds and while that statement is more hype than reality, if you look at the games where devs went all the way building them for the system like Freedom Wars, Gravity Rush, Uncharted, those games are simply gorgeous looking and play smooth as silk. And Vita being perfect for VN where resolution truly doesn't matter, it was said here and it's a fact.

 

If you read into my posts you might notice my stance has always been about what you need out of a system. If you need stable playtime for five hours and can lose HD for a console experience, go Vita. If you need HD and can lose the playtime and the control pad, go Android. If you weigh Vita and PS4 and what you really need the most is multiple account support, go PS4. There's not much else to it, everything in the world has it's pros and cons. None of these alternatives are shit compared to the other, they're different based on what you need out of them. Ultimately your digital purchases being tied to your PSN account makes your factual choices and the focus of the discussion for a platform between exactly Vita and a PS4. Deliberately bringing mobile phones into the mix as "proof" Vita is somehow bad at what it does, I honestly feel the direction the thread would take was set up right there...