PS Vita – Can it fill the boots of the PSP?

In England, we were blessed with the PAL version of the original Sony PSP on September 1st, 2005. At this point the world had already had a fair amount of time to adopt to the original Nintendo DS, so the PSP was huge when it came along. It boasted an analogue nub, a 4.3 inch 16:9 display, USB 2.0, external memory by use of memory cards; though to me, this meant nothing. I wasn’t at an age where all the specifications meant much to me, back when it was released I was only 10 years old and all I was interested in was getting my hands on it and playing every game I could afford. It wasn’t until a year after release that I actually got the device, but it was amazing when I did.

So what does all of this have to do with the Vita, you’re asking? Well I’m not sure if the magic that the PSP was when it first arrived is going to be matched this time with the Vita. Sure, all the touch capabilities of the device are neat and open up interesting game play options, but do we need all of it? The PSP has had, in total 5 different revisions over the years. The latest two, being the PSP Go and the PSP E1000 have been the biggest change, with the PSP go throwing away the disk drive and only allowing downloaded games through the PSN to be playable. The E1000 removed all wireless capabilities and left you with a more wallet friendly PSP for those who just want a simple console for playing a quick game. Yet, aside from the PSP Go, the form factor has never changed.

Now we also see the same familiar form factor with the Vita, yet we also get the protruding dual joysticks which differ from the thumb nub that we got used to with the old PSP. We get a brilliant 5 inch OLED, multi-touch display, which is sure to give us a great amount of game play. However, is it really that impressive to the kids, like the PSP was when it came to us? I asked my Nephew what he thought about the Playstation Vita, he’s almost 9 years old, so fairly close to the age I was back then. He didn’t seem very impressed at all, it didn’t jump out at him like it did for me once upon a time. “It’s too complicated” he said.

Is our gaming becoming over-complicated? Is Sony trying to push the Vita too far into the future, with too much packed into it? Personally, I agree with the kid. I don’t want to have to worry about back touch panels, or stretching my fingers to touch the screen and obstructing my views. I want to sit back, pull out an old PSP and play some Need for Speed, simple and easy. This said, I still remain open minded.

But what do you all think, is the PS Vita  over-complicating portable gaming, or are you remaining open minded until we can get hold of the device? The Vita’s coming to North America and Europe on February 22nd, so you haven’t got that much longer to wait!

As a side question, what was your favorite game on the old PSP systems? Discuss away, friends!