Gamescom Was a Nice Little Vita Show After All

A common worry going into Sony's Gamescome Event was that it was going to be an all-PS4 show.  That's not a far-fetched idea, given that the PS4 is the new hotness riding a wave of positive PR thanks to E3 and such, but everyone was hoping that the Vita would see some sort of acknowledgement, and we got that and then some.  We didn't get a sequel to Uncharted:  Golden Abyss announcement (unfortunately, this would've been the perfect time to announce it) or a Gravity Rush 2 announcement (which was always going to be TGS), but we got some good news nonetheless.  News that some people are prodding endlessly with a stick instead of just saying "Yeah, it's good" because we can't all agree on anything ever because why would we, but that's just the way of things.

Between the straight-up price-cut of the Vita itself and the lowered memory card prices, Sony managed to shave a very nice bit of the price off the lovely little portable.  A nice bit more than people actually realize, it seems, because they're not looking at the big picture.  The $50 price-cut of the Vita itself is steep and much nicer to think about, and each tier of the memory cards took a drop.  4 Gig dropped $5, 8 Gig dropped $10 and the 16 and 32 Gigs each dropped $20, meaning you're spending a right comparable amount of money picking up a Vita and a 16 Gig card versus a 3DSXL bundle.  My 3DS XL Bundle, the Animal Crossing one was ~$220 for the system, Animal Crossing (pre-loaded) and a 4 Gig stick (which was less than 4 gigs because Animal Crossing).  If you buy the shiny Walking Dead Vita Bundle for $200 (which comes with a 4 gig stick) and throw down $40 for a 16 gig stick, you have $240 invested in it, 4 times the storage for $20 extra.  Essentially, price parity is pretty nice and if when you throw in Playstation Plus for $50, you get a ridiculous amount of games for a year which makes the value shoot right up.  So yes, you spend a little more, but you get miles more than the money you spend unless you jump in the Wal-Mart deal, spend less and get a shitload of content.

People rail on and on that there's no reason for the proprietary cards and insane prices and, sorry, there is.  It's called the PSP.  Piracy was absolute bananas on the PSP and, unlike the DS, it actively squeezed out and over-shadowed actual purchases for the device, which is not something that Sony wanted a repeat of.  Games just didn't sell, but whenever they released, they were among the most pirated things on all the popular sites out there, so the age-old excuse of "if there were good games I -would- buy them" went right out the damn window.  Hell, Metal Gear Solid:  Peace Walker only sold 52,000 physical copies in America at launch which is ridiculous for a Metal Gear Solid game and especially as good of one as Peace Walker was.  Yet, there were far, far more people that played it than that - it's not like the DS was where a game got 23.34 Million sales (like Mario Kart DS, jesus) and got heavily pirated as well.  That's what I mean when I say that the actual buyers got squeezed out of the equation - the buyers just didn't compare at all to the people just straight-up downloading the games.  So that's why they went a more controlled route this go around.  Because you can't tell me that people would've bought games for a $250 Sony handheld if it was as easy to pirate as the PSP.

There was also the matter of games being announced for it, which is, you know, kind of important.  Borderlands 2 came out of nowhere to see a release on the Vita sometime in 2014, brought to us by Iron Galaxy Studios, the team who developed DiveKick which just released this week.  That...is certainly a get for Sony, and it was alongside several other announcements for the Vita that I will defer to Chance for because I don't want to mine in Joystiq posts and cobble together a bunch of links.  Let's take a look at the list, shall we?

• Age of Zombies (BlitWorks/Halfbrick)
• A-Men 2 (Bloober Team)
• Assault Android Cactus (Witch Beam)
• Avoid Droid (Infinite State Games)
• Broken Sword: the Serpent’s Curse (Revolution Software)
• Eufloria HD (Omni Systems)
• Fez (Polytron Corporation)
• Final Horizon (Eiconic Games)
• Flame Over (Laughing Jackal)
• Gravity Crash Ultra (Just Add Water)
• Gunslugs (Abstraction Games)
• Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (Dennaton Games and Devolver Digital)
• Joe Danger 1 (Hello Games)
• Joe Danger 2 (Hello Games)
• Kick & Fennick (Green Hill Studios)
• Minecraft (4J Studios)
• Rogue Legacy (Cellar Door Games)
• Samurai Gunn (Teknopants)
• Starbound (Chucklefish)
• Supermagical (Tama Games)
• Switch Galaxy Ultra (Atomicom)
• Table Top Racing (Ripstone)
• The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Nicalis)
• Volume (Mike Bithell)
• Wasteland Kings (Vlambeer)

I had to add Minecraft and Starbound, the last of which is almost more impressive than Minecraft, because it's essentially Terraria ins Spaaaaaaaaace (one-half of the original two Terraria developers is making it), it has a ton of content, and there's absolutely no Vita Terraria sales data just yet, meaning it's a blind leap of faith and that's so appreciated.  Granted, all of those are games that are classified as "Indie", but as we've come to learn, that doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot in the grand scheme of things.  The prime gradient here is content and Minecraft, Terraria and Starbound at the very least are going to have those in spades, not to mention Rogue Legacy and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.  Those are just the games that I know a little about.  As you can see, there are a hell of a lot of other games on that list, and that's probably not even a complete list.  And this is all before TGS.  And before the PS4 launches and does Remote Play like a champ.

Yeah.  The Vita's gonna be just fine.

Gearbox Wants Borderlands 2 on Vita

So, Randy Pitchford, President of Gearbox Software who own the Borderlands franchise and are generally in charge of everything to do with it has expressed something that I think we all want, and not just him.  He says that he wants Borderlands 2 on the Vita which is a rather admirable goal, of course, since the system has poised itself to be a potential portable FPS machine (on top of its other merits).  Of course there....is just a little bit of a rub to it.  "We're too busy to develop it ourselves", he says, which I could believe wholeheartedly.  After all, the game is set to come out in September, which is only a few months away, and saying that they 'want' the game on the system means that they, er, haven't made any strides towards it.  And it's not like porting a game simply takes an afternoon to do, much less when you barely have the resources to do so.

However, he did present a solution to it, however far-fetched it might seem at first.  "Perhaps some of you folks can convince Sony to start that,"..."But I know there are a lot of talented developers who could take our code, our source and our content and perhaps create something like that."  So, if by some reason that isn't clear enough, the proposal he's putting on the table here is that he'll front the coding and such of Borderlands 2 if Sony is willing to pony up a studio to tool it to the Vita (which is a specialized task at this point, considering the device hasn't been out for half a year yet) and publish it.  It is a very potentially lucrative option for Sony, as if they could make Cross-play with the PS3 version work, it'd sync right in with their PS3/Vita plan, and you cannot tell me that Borderlands 2 Vita isn't a very, very tempting prospect to a lot of people.  Aside from that, if Sony were to publish the game (through the developer they have code it or what have you) that'd net in a little more cash for them than it would otherwise.

For my part, and I say this every time that something like this comes up, a potential Vita version has definitely turned my interest in Borderlands 2 from "Not at all" to "Quite", as I have to admit I followed the original from afar, never going so far as to simply purchasing and playing it.  It's one of those games where I always intended to, of course, but just never got around to it yet, as there is not really something of a shelf life against it or anything.  A Vita version of 2 could certainly tempt me into pulling the trigger on it (pun intended) in short order, if just so I could enjoy the rather unique art style the games bring to the table.  Though, I'm told that the original game is good fun and such and there is that, but seriously, just take a look at some screenshots for the game.  Like the one at the top of the post.  As well as other ones that you'll have to look for yourselves.  Little homework never hurt anyone.

I do find it a bit odd that I can't really talk on the game based on the fact that I know....well, less than most about it.  I understand that the driving force of the first game was its rather surprisingly Diablo-esque approach to loot drops, in the form of all sorts of firearms being found here and there with special properties decided at random.  Much as one could expect to search a dungeon for a randomly generated enchanted blade, you'll similarly find that same feeling of exploration in Borderlands.  I imagine the sequel will carry over and improve that in ways I cannot begin to fathom at this point.  I also figure that, based on the screenshot above, there's a certain skill system in place, making it so that you can customize whichever of the characters you decide to assume the role of, meaning no two versions of the character will be the same insomuch as from-the-box, as it were.  Aside from the focus on party-play, there's not a whole lot else I can contribute to discussions on the game.

Regardless, the point of doing this post was to make sure the idea was out there as much as it can be, as much as I can do.  So all....three of the people who read this blog semi-faithfully are now totally informed.  (I'm kidding, I'm kidding.  Kind of.)  They say that the best way to spread news like this, though, is simply to just disperse it like this, make sure everyone does their part, no matter how big or small it might be.  Whether or not I think it really works like that is a bit up in the air, but hey, I am sort of telling of something fairly news-worthy that someone else told of based on something they were told directly from the source, so already this is like three degrees of separation.  So maybe there is some logic to it after all.  But the important thing is less getting it known as a possibility, and more that people who -know- about the possibility try and, you know, push things in that direction.  So, hey, all three people that read this, go push!