PS Vita time is now again

PS Vita time is now again

Every two weeks, I take out my gadget graveyard from under my bed. I look at my iPods, old phones and some other stuff. Most of this no longer excites me, but the PS Vita is another story. It's the device I pull over most often, charge it, well, to feel like it's part of the modern world.

I keep in a wide waterfield design soft case that erases fingerprints when I go inside so it's smudge free when I take it out, revealing design details I can clearly see over and over again. The bar has an unshakable affinity to look for: gorgeous translucent shoulder buttons; Large (but not too large) display; and sturdy yet elegant build quality. Almost everything that ran with the look and feel of the Vita is still useful today, even if it's much smaller than the size of the Nintendo Switch.

You've probably heard it a million times, but the Vita, announced in mid-2011, was Sony's competing-everything device to take mobile phones and Nintendo's 3DS forward with console-like controls and graphics. Was prepared. -Thinking (though ultimately without advice) features such as 3G support, its own apps and a rear touchpad were a playground for innovation in gameplay.

Ten years later, the Vita is pretty much dead outside a vibrant homebrew scene I'm constantly fascinated by. It only took a fraction of those 10 years to decide her fate, and it was well worth it. Or rather, parts of Sony's vision for the Vita did. Remember your Godforsaken proprietary memory card that cost a fortune and its micro USB port? Yeah bye. But there's a lot more about the Vita that could be revamped for 2022; I just like to pretend that the concept of the handheld isn't so dead for Sony.

A new Vita shouldn't have a new ecosystem for exclusive games and apps built around it, nor does it need to deliver high-end performance. In fact, I want a modern Vita with USB-C charging and a lightweight OS built to complement Sony's PlayStation Plus plans, with cloud streaming and all that. Remove some hardware frills and ship it. Just give me a reason to stop obsessing over this dead gadget.

What more do I need in the next generation PS Vita? I'm glad you asked. Using a late 2013 Vita revision as my reference, I'm willing to accept a slightly wider and longer arm to accommodate more buttons (just to show what's on the PS5's DualSense controller). I really like the thickness of this Vita, which is as thick as a deck of cards, though I'll be cool with taking a few extra millimeters to include the proper set of L2 and R2 triggers. Otherwise, leave the rest of the design alone - I still love it.

As far as OS, slap Android on it, that's all I care about. Keep the bubbly user interface, or make it stock Android. The latter would make it more practical for me to use it for other forms of entertainment, and I'm sure a relatively midrange Snapdragon chipset could get the job done. You can take or leave the game cartridge slot, but a microSD card slot, a headphone jack, and an OLED screen would be nice. I mean, it has to be trendy, right? Even the debut Vita model had OLED. Sony changed it to an LCD in the second iteration.

With the Vita in my hands, it seems to me that the revised version will get more viewers today than it did in early 2010. Sony seems to agree that handhelds are an essential part of the business today as it plans to make its phone games. on the basis of his popular suffrage. I mean, Sony has partnered with Backbone to make an officially licensed PlayStation controller that wraps around an iPhone. What Sony is doing internally in terms of handheld hardware is making gaming accessories exclusive to its specific Xperia phones.

The last five years in technology have supplied more handhelds than mine (and apparently Sony, too) could have ever predicted. Several products have capitalized on the Switch's dominance in their own way, including the multiflavored Aya Neo console, Steam Deck, Analog Pocket, and soon (if the rumors are true), Logitech's hands. Some reimagining of the Vita seems like an obvious idea. It falls under the here and now along with all other portable consoles, even if Sony doesn't see it that way.