So, in most parts of the world, the 1.80 update, which is talked about in the above video is either live (personally, mine is downloading as I type this) or on its way, assuredly. As I brought up back on the 14th, the star of the 1.80 show is the PSOne Support and, as suspected, it seems that it's going to be a gradual process of opening up, rather than a whole lot of stuff magically working right off. At least...that's how it seems to be for North America and not so much for PAL territories which is certainly.....certainly a thing, I suppose. No one seems to know why there is such a giant disparity, but there's probably a few things to be addressed before going into that further. This one's a real head-scratcher as always, and pretty much all I have to go on is what I've read so far, less I want to put this post out a half-hour from now when my update finishes and I get to test it myself. That, I suspect, will just be an update after I get a firm grasp on it all.
So, something to address right off is that, for as great as the PAL list is, I don't see Xenogears on it (nor do I know if it's either on their store) so nyeh, take that. (I'm so sorry, Xenogears was pretty much the only thing I wanted to DL right up-front, but I guess I'll fall back on FFVII) In all seriousness, however, the lists do appear to be deceiving, not only for us, but for the PAL-land as well, presumably because the update has come up before the announced dates of the 28th and the 29th. For instance, I've heard some statements claiming that some games aren't on the list, yet downloadable, versus some are on the list, but cannot be gotten by the conventional method of getting it right on your Vita. I say this because, as with the PSP library (and it persists now, really) some titles can be gotten on your Vita if you have a PS3 to go along with it and serve as a content gathering machine.
The process is as simple as getting on your PS3, downloading the PSOne game of your choosing, NOT INSTALLING IT, and instead transferring that bubble that you install the game with to your Vita, presumably through the content manager. This is not fool-proof, of course, as the game has to be a game that can be played on the PSOne emulator that the Vita is being out-fitted with. For reasons unknown to everyone, certain games (this is true with PSP as well) simply are kept back, presumably to be tweaked more for best performance with the emulator, but are still in a very playable state if you can get them. This list proves to be a lot larger than the 9 titles we have, I'm told and is probably on par or thereabouts with the PAL list. If you're willing to put in that amount of effort, of course which, you might guess, I am not. Call me silly or what have you, but I'm more than happy to wait for the titles to be 'officially' touted before I get in there and get attached once more. I assume they will do this as they've done with the PSP games in recent weeks; thrown them in the new releases section even though they are hardly new at all, simply because they are probably new to play for plenty of people.
It's not ideal, of course, and I'm positive there will be so much whinging and "Oh lord, Sony is incompetent" and blah blah blah, rabble rabble, but it's all just hilarious to me, as there is honestly pretty much a triple-standard at play here and nobody seems to realize it, nor care. For some, it's simply 'too much' that this wasn't here at launch and they will not let up beyond that. Others, they harp on that it took so long, but understand it wasn't a thing that could be done. Then the last caste gripe that it took too long -and- there are only these titles officially supported at the front-end of it. So no matter what, they're annoyed that it took 'this long', so if it worked perfectly, they'd still bitch, meanwhile, there are people who bitch for the sake of it and etc. etc. There's just no substance to it, and if anything, push me to be more passive to it all than anything. Snarky people say "Heh, it's such a big thing for the Vita to play ten-year old games" and then complain that they cannot play their favorite ten-year old game on it right away and I'm just not sure where these people find the time to complain, really. Between Gravity Rush, Treasures of Montezuma Blitz and a plethora of PSP games (not to mention the Youtube App), I've discovered that I don't have enough hours in a day for -anything-, much less whinging about things for no reason.
Do I get it on some level? Of course. I want to play Xenogears, and I wanted to play it like two months ago, but my real recourse is to just fish out my disks and play them on one of my consoles that will allow such a thing, or purchase it digitally for my PS3 (which if I'm playing anything on, it's Sleeping Dogs or Lollipop Chainsaw). Or buy a new PSP since my good ol' 1000 is borked nine ways from Sunday. I have all these options at my disposal, but since I prefer the one where I get to play Xenogears on that lovely screen of my Vita, I can wait. Patiently. I'm not really sure what part of this is a difficult concept, especially since holding back the update until all the titles are compatible means it probably wouldn't come out for months. Regardless, it's not like I don't have a wealth of things to do on my Vita, so the fact that I won't be able to play Xenogears on it tonight, tomorrow or the next day isn't really a factor for me. It'll get resolved enough soon enough for the rest of the folks, I'm sure, so once again it's simply a big to-do for the sake of it.
Update!: Well, I can download Final Fantasy VII and probably will. Honestly, that's fine enough for me for now. The whole thing is pretty well-documented by now, but it's not really that big a deal unless you're a giant baby working for Joystiq in charge of most of the Mobile Gaming posts and clearly have a hate boner for all things not on a cell phone. Not that I'm bitterly pointing fingers at anyone who's being a jerk about the situation just because he can be for some page hits from the lowest common denominator that will just agree with him despite the intricacies involved.
