PS Vita physical games being discontinued in US and Europe

[JapanimeGamer]

2 hours ago, jrdemr said:

 

The problem is that not all of us are fluent in Japanese (well, I actually am, but it's still much more comfortable reading a translation XD).

 

Knowing common phrases in a particular language does not equate to being fluent, it amazes me how many people claim this.

 

The last thing I will say about this is if anyone WAS fluent in Japanese then it would not be more comfortable for them to read a translation because they would be fluent in the language which means it would be the same for them either way.

 

Anyway. 

 

Vita getting no physical copies in the west is not really a big deal, it was never really drowning in them anyway. Nothing changes really.

[gabor434]

18 minutes ago, jrdemr said:

@Satoshi Ookami Since you're the Vita king 'round these parts, do you know if Vita game cards usually have multiple languages, like PS3 and PS4 games? Because if they do, I'm just going to switch all my physical Vita game purchases over to play-asia.

 

 

Can publishers just do that? Even if they can, won't the importing fees increase since the distance travelled is so much longer? If so, won't this still act as a deterrent for physical Vita releases in the West? At best, we'll have a price increase for physical games.

 

Im not a Vita weeb king like Satoshi ?, but i made my research about importing games from asia so I'll answer.

Very few asian Vita games have english language available and most of those are Hong Kong Chinese versions.

99.9% of japanese region Vita games only have japanese language available and there are a few which also have chinese subs and possibly 1 or 2 which have english, but i dont know any examples.
But on the other hand, Play Asia also sells some EU and NA region games and they also publish a few games that you can only buy there (like Limited Run Games), those games have english of course.

It is listed with every single game on the site which languages it has, so you can check that before purchase.

There is even a category for english asia games. Link

 

About your second question, only Sony knows the answer to that. My guess is that they might still willing to take orders from small publishers like Limited Run Games and Play Asia, but those games are usually limited to little over a thousand copies anyway, so they will be rare and expensive. ☹️

[Zenpai]

22 minutes ago, JapanimeGamer said:

 

Knowing common phrases in a particular language does not equate to being fluent, it amazes me how many people claim this.

 

The last thing I will say about this is if anyone WAS fluent in Japanese then it would not be more comfortable for them to read a translation because they would be fluent in the language which means it would be the same for them either way.

 

I mean... when I went to Japan last year, I spoke in Japanese to the Japanese pretty much all the time. To the point of having actual conversations, not just asking for directions or simple stuff like that. I also have actual regular conversations in Japanese with my teacher every single week.

 

I have JLPT N3 and I'm working towards taking N2 at the end of the year. I would say I'm reasonably fluent. I just lack the practice to be able to read it as comfortably as I do English, for instance. But I've been ramping up my studies a lot, lately. I've seen my reading speed increase a lot lately and I'm soon going to read a big series entirely in Japanese, maybe even try out my first Japanese game.

 

2 minutes ago, gabor434 said:

 

Im not a Vita weeb king like Satoshi , but i made my research about importing games from asia so I'll answer.

Very few asian Vita games have english language available and most of those are Hong Kong Chinese versions.

99.9% of japanese region Vita games only have japanese language available and there are a few which also have chinese subs and possibly 1 or 2 which have english, but i dont know any examples.
But on the other hand, Play Asia also sells some EU and NA region games and they also publish a few games that you can only buy there (like Limited Run Games), those games have english of course.

It is listed with every single game on the site which languages it has, so you can check that before purchase.

There is even a category for english asia games. Link

 

About your second question, only Sony knows the answer to that. My guess is that they might still willing to take orders from small publishers like Limited Run Games and Play Asia, but those games are usually limited to little over a thousand copies anyway, so they will be rare and expensive.

 

Thanks for the info!

[DeathNyx]

This is a bad news indeed because i prefer to have retails in my collection. Digital is good only to waste HDD space...

[Caju_94]

I personally prefer buying Digital games for my Vita, since it's a little hard to get Vita games on my country and some of them can be quite expensive, in my personal opinion. So, I'm personally not much worried about that...

[Honor_Hand]

I'm a bit more awake now than when I posted my last message here yesterday...

 

I read the news and it says:

 

Quote

 

Sony’s American and European branches “plan to end all Vita GameCard production by close of fiscal year 2018,” the company told developers today in a message obtained by Kotaku. The message asks that all Vita product code requests be submitted by June 28, 2018, and that final purchase orders be entered by February 15, 2019. Sony’s 2018 fiscal year will end on March 31, 2019.

 

1

 

That means we still have almost one year before the well of physical games dries up completely, right?

 

Although from the comments I'm reading, it looks like everyone wants to start buying the games right now. I'm asking as to know how I should prioritize getting the console and the games in physical form. There is definitely going to be a price hike in the long run but I wonder if prices are gonna be raising from now on even though there is almost a year of production left.  

[DaivRules]

2 hours ago, jrdemr said:

Can publishers just do that? Even if they can, won't the importing fees increase since the distance travelled is so much longer? If so, won't this still act as a deterrent for physical Vita releases in the West? At best, we'll have a price increase for physical games.

 

Depends on what the import fees are for blank gamecards. Sometimes import fees aren't just based on distance traveled. In the US, generally it's the tariffs (hot button topic right now) that can make things crazy expensive supposedly to encourage local buying when it's an option, but they can be mitigated. For example, importing Italian wool suits has a crazy high tariff, but if you just import Italian wood material and make the suit IN the US, it reduces the tariff by ~75%.

 

Getting a distributor to set up shop in the states, importing blank gamecards (presumably avoiding higher fees because they're blank), programming and assembling here in the states could mitigate import fees and/or tariffs. Demand would have to be high *enough* (likely only a couple thousand), but I doubt it would be more expensive than the playasia purchases are right now and would likely be cheaper. Set up shop on Amazon as your exclusive retailer (to avoid the costs involved and possibly get some perks from Amazon) and you'd be in business.

 

Current scenario can only result in increased prices for digital games. There are no real winners with physical games going away.

6 minutes ago, Honor_Hand said:

I'm asking as to know how I should prioritize getting the console and the games in physical form. There is definitely going to be a price hike in the long run but I wonder if prices are gonna be raising from now on even though there is almost a year of production left.  

 

Depends. When UMDs stopped for PSP, prices dropped generally, except for a few titles. Mainly the physical-only titles that never made it to digital.

 

Mentally set a price you're comfortable with when buying a physical game, and if you see something at or below, but it. There will be no universal rules for dealing with this. 

[NathanDarko]

I love my Vita System since the very first day and even play with my vita every day on my way to work, in planes, train, in night shifts and so on. I have 266 Platinum. Almost 40% of them very achieed on my Vita. And believe me or not i definitely have enough games on my wishlist for another 2 years i never regret that i bought the vita. 

 

There is so much to play for Trophy Hunters.

[ccase137]

A shame to see this but not unexpected.  To be fair, I have noticed that new physical releases has been getting more and more rare.  However, it was great to get games that were not released in my country at all due to being refused classification (Australia) like Valkyrie Drive, Drive Girls, Gal Gun etc physically, games that I wouldn't have been able to play otherwise.  This news just spurred me to buy Muv-Luv now and will most likely be my last physical Vita games.

[Honor_Hand]

22 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

Current scenario can only result in increased prices for digital games. There are no real winners with physical games going away.

 

Depends. When UMDs stopped for PSP, prices dropped generally, except for a few titles. Mainly the physical-only titles that never made it to digital.

 

Mentally set a price you're comfortable with when buying a physical game, and if you see something at or below, but it. There will be no universal rules for dealing with this. 

 

You're right, I had completely forgotten about that. Most UMDs for PSP games are ridiculously cheap nowadays so I guess we should probably expect the same. The big difference I presume is that the stock for those games was much higher than that of the Vita games, mostly due to the relative success the PSP had compared to the Vita. The PSP sold way better than the Vita in its time and I assume the availability of physical games was on the high side.

 

The Vita didn't have the same amount of success than the PSP in terms of units sold, so I was thinking that there may be less of a stock of games available out there. And if that small stock starts to reduce quickly due to a high demand, shouldn't we expect the prices to rise? I mean, I'm trying to see things in an offer-demand kind of way. No idea about the stock on games though. Most comments I've seen above lead me to believe that physical games on the Vita are already a rare thing. In my country, at least, I can confirm that they are indeed extremely rare as most stores don't carry new or used games of this console at all. There are only a few couple of common titles that can be found used here and there from particular online sellers at a reasonable price, not too expensive but not too cheap either. Then again, my country is an oddity in itself and I don't know if the availability is different elsewhere.

 

 

[Puchteca]

Upsetting news. I love the Vita, it's a really good piece of hardware. Too bad sony's mismanagement of it sabotaged it.

[Melty]

This is pretty sad I wanted to buy another vita. I hope the EoL for vita comes fast, so the HENkaku community stars cranking everything out. 

Edited May 16, 2018 by Melty

[Nitro]

Well I guess LE won't be releasing any more vita games. Great move Sony! 10/10!

Edited May 16, 2018 by Nitro

[Satoshi Ookami]

8 hours ago, jrdemr said:

 

@Satoshi Ookami Since you're the Vita king 'round these parts, do you know if Vita game cards usually have multiple languages, like PS3 and PS4 games? Because if they do, I'm just going to switch all my physical Vita game purchases over to play-asia.

1

I guess your question has been answered already

Yes, it's like that. Very sparse amount of Vita games have multiple languages. Heck, a majority of European versions are not in all base languages (English, German, French, Portuguese, Italian) =D 

It applies even less to the Asian versions. You are actually glad if you get a version with more than one language =D And even that is as sparse as possible.

English Asia versions are just as rare as Vita games in western stores

 

6 hours ago, NathanDarko said:

I love my Vita System since the very first day and even play with my vita every day on my way to work, in planes, train, in night shifts and so on. I have 266 Platinum. Almost 40% of them very achieed on my Vita. And believe me or not i definitely have enough games on my wishlist for another 2 years i never regret that i bought the vita. 

5

Only 40%? Time to fix that  

 

Also... skipped VNs :/

[Elvick_]

Sony should have just kept things going, everything was fine. Stupid decision that just reminds people of how shitty they were with Vita. Why would they end production for physical copies when publishers are still willing to release games for it? Dumb.

[Afro_Gear]

I love my Vita(s). I purchase mostly physical games because as we all know, eventually services end and I want to be able to play a game on my Vita 30 years from now even though it will no longer be available for download. 

 

That being said, BE VOCAL. Go on twitter. Tweet @yosp @shawnlayden @playstation. Be kind but be serious. Let them know you want physical production of cartridges to continue, or at the very least allow 3rd party developers to make them without restriction. Maybe we can be just vocal enough to buy our Vita some more time. 

[ShadowStar83x]

Limited Run Games has said it won't impact them in the short term, but later...who knows.

[Nexuds121]

On May 16, 2018 at 3:03 PM, Undead Wolf said:

I'm sorry, but what the FUCK!? This is such bullshit. I'm legitimately pissed off at this news... It seems like Sony are trying their hardest to kill off the Vita. They recently announced that they would stop giving out Vita games on PS+, and now this!? If they want to stop supporting Vita, then fine, but stopping other other publishers from releasing physical games on the platform is the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I supported their niche platform when hardly anyone else would, even Sony themselves. I bought so many physical games for the system simply because I love Vita and collecting physical games, but now I can't even do that. I feel like I've just been stabbed in the back... Fuck. You. Sony.

I agree with you. Fuck Sony.

[AJ_Radio]

20 hours ago, Sergen said:

All of this work leads me to believe further that Sony is really planning to cut PlayStation Network support for PS3 and vita. I know it's been many people's argument against that by saying "But PSN is shared across all the platforms", however whenever they decide to release the PlayStation 5, they could very well make new PSN servers and only have their platforms from this generation of gaming included, while excluding platforms that used the old PSN servers. PSN for vita shutting down wouldn't be the thing that makes me retire from PSN eternally, but closing PSN for PS3 would be, as that console is the one where I invested most of my money and also have the most games for. Physical games aren't backwards compatible with PSP and vita, but digital games are so if they decide to cut PSN support for the vita console they could well make another portable console that lets you use your vita games on it. If they do ever announce shutting PSN for PS3, I will at least wait a little bit to see what the news about the PS5 will be, but if I find out that the only way to access PS3 games after they shut PSN for PS3 will be through PS Now then I will retire from PSN eternally and never look back. People ass lick Sony a lot, but aside from some good exclusives for their platforms, they're really a money-hungry company who doesn't give a shit about the customers. You don't often see Microsoft and Valve routinely shutting the flagship games of their platforms. I'll say that if you enjoy a game that is multi-platform and has multiplayer, make sure you're playing it on PC or xbox, because you know damn well the game will shut down on PSN before anywhere else 99% of the time. 

 

There are a good number of PSN games on PS3 that I would like to grab at some point. Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi, Super Stardust HD, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Shatter, Magic Orbz, and a bunch of other digital only games.

 

This isn't just PSN only games, this also includes any DLC that has to be downloaded through the PS3 Store. Should this happen and you missed out on Castlevania: Lord of Shadow's DLC packs, you're basically fucked.

 

The proper thing to do is to just re-release these PSN games on the PS4 or PS5. But from the sounds of it it doesn't sound like Sony is doing that, they're forcing you to pay a subscription for PS Now, which is like saying "Fuck your physical releases with DLC, stream your games instead".

 

My problem with Sony these days is they're too far out in front. The Xbox One fiasco back in 2013 greatly hurt Microsoft, and they are greatly lagging behind in sales. Steam has the most indie titles and they're a pretty good platform if you want to try out the latest indie games. The problem is their Steam Achievement system is completely garbage. The achievements mean absolutely nothing to me since a lot of people cheat at them and Steam doesn't seem to care much. There is even a program I believe out there that lets you gain achievements automatically, and some titles have an absolutely absurd amount of Steam achievements, many of which are meaningless.

 

For how piss poor Sony is and how they have treated their fanbase, the only thing I can give them a lot of credit for is creating an achievement system that actually makes sense and is more fair. Trophies. I love getting trophies and that platinum, that's one of my main reasons why I'm still with Sony's consoles.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Spaz

[Dr_Shaneman]

This saddens me, especially as I was finally going to buy one this year.

I dislike buying digital.

[Zenpai]

8 minutes ago, Dr_Shaneman said:

This saddens me, especially as I was finally going to buy one this year.

I dislike buying digital.

 

Same. I'd already bought most of the Vita games I want for now, but I went and got Uncharted: Golden Abyss before it got even rarer/more expensive. Even now, brand new copies of the game are already quite expensive. Had to get a used one. Thankfully, I have a blank Vita case I can just use if there are too many signs of wear and tear.

[AJ_Radio]

1 minute ago, jrdemr said:

 

Same. I'd already bought most of the Vita games I want for now, but I went and got Uncharted: Golden Abyss before it got even rarer/more expensive. Even now, brand new copies of the game are already quite expensive. Had to get a used one. Thankfully, I have a blank Vita case I can just use if there are too many signs of wear and tear.

 

I bought my copy of Uncharted: Golden Abyss brand new in 2016 and it was already cheaper than it is now.

 

I hate what Sony is doing these days. As I said before, they're too far out in front.

[yellowwindow7]

something is telling me that a Vita successor will be a digital only and a cloud based system.

[DarkSoleride]

15 minutes ago, yellowwindow7 said:

something is telling me that a Vita successor will be a digital only and a cloud based system.

or the PlayStation 5 will be a more advanced hybrid of the N. Switch i can see that being a real possibility with more and more people wanting power but portability would make sense rather than a PS Vita 2. This way they would keep physical games. 

Edited May 17, 2018 by DarkSoleride

[AJ_Radio]

I don't think Sony is willing to release another portable console anytime soon. As much as I want them to I don't see that happening.

 

In my opinion Sony is putting all their eggs in one basket. I don't think they care about physical anymore, as long as you subscribe to PS Now and buy their games through the Store (including AAA games) that's mostly where their concerns are.

 

They have made a ridiculous amount of profit these past couple years, not just from PS Plus subscriptions but also for the fact they released the PS4 Pro. The PS4 Slim is mostly just a slimmed down console that has the same functions as the vanilla PS4. The Playstation 2 and Playstation 3 generations had their 'slim' consoles, so that is nothing new.