Digital Foundry vs. PlayStation Vita

Sony's PlayStation Portable redefined the state of the art for mobile gaming technology back in 2004 with its luxurious 480x272 colour screen and custom architecture that powered graphically immense titles like God of War, Ridge Racer, Gran Turismo, LittleBigPlanet and Metal Gear Solid among many others. While many argued that portable versions of home console games were not the way forward, with PlayStation Vita we find that Sony continues to beg to differ.

[FutureTechnologies]

"The whole game appears to be rendering with a native framebuffer somewhere in the region of 720x408 (which is 75 per cent of the Vita's maximum 960x544 resolution), meaning the game's image quality isn't quite as exemplary as we'd hoped it would be, and that scaling artifacts are evident."

You must be kidding me, the game won't even run at vita's native resolution. The device seems to be outdated at launch or the developer did poor optimization, anyway I believe the games will look better and better with time, just look at the PS3.

[STK026]

I don't know about it being outdated, but I sure hope this doesn't become a standard. In my opinion, a sub-720p game has no place on the PS3/360, and on a handheld, all games should use the native resolution. I just hope this is the exception, not the standard; as it would be disappointing to have such a nice creen, and to have it used in such a poor manner.

[STK026]

Last time I checked, Alan Wake got blasted for being subHD, same with Halos, many criticised GTA4 on the PS3 for being subHD, and plenty of other games that have been released on both the PS3 and the 360 this generation and were running at a subHD resolution on "HD consoles"; despite tthe fact that the games looked fine.

Since you names GTA4, it ran natively at 720p on the X360 and slightly lower on the PS3, and anyone who has seen both versions of the game will agree that the X360 version looked slightly better than the PS3 version. And while I do visit IGN, it's pretty rare to see someone quote IGN on N4G, since it seems the community seems to think they are unreliable.

For your information, I already have my Vita preordered, and to some extent, I agree with your point. However, I still believe games should run at the same resolution as the screen. Not doing so seems like a waste, and future games might take that road, which I for one think would be regrettable.

By the way, what is the Light Brigade? And why do you presume I'm in (or is it with) it?

[Diver]

sorry stk but Morgan mention ign. they are one of the sites that gave the edge to the ps3. go look up the review. several sites said the same thing. you are proving his point. as soon as you know the resolution it changes the truth.

[despair]

you chose to mention only the Golden Abyss quote but ignored UMvC3 which runs at full Vita screen resolution and 60 FPS. Its all about the technical aspect of the games and I'm sure the lower resolution (which you would have no idea about until DF pointed it out) is to beef up performance. Gravity Rush as well runs on the lower resolution but its not like all games will be limited to that.

[moparful99]

People look to resolution as the end all be all of gaming performance standards but they dont realize that sacrificing a few lines of resolution for the sake of framerate is the better trade off.. I'd rather have a smooth running game over a full resolution game any day..

[Ddouble]

Other consoles had sub-res games at launch too but as time goes on, the games get better. Also not every game is sub-res as despair pointed out with Ultimate Marvel.

[Ddouble]

Other consoles had sub-res games at launch too but as time goes on, the games get better. Also not every game is sub-res as despair pointed out with Ultimate Marvel and also Virtua Tennis

[rob6021]

It's a 5 inch screen. I'm sure it looks amazing even at 75% resolution. Maybe not blown up on a 19 inch pc monitor - (keep in mind chances are your monitor has far more space between pixels) yea you can see the jaggies, but good luck seeing them on the vita.

[FutureTechnologies]

+I don't why a lot of people don't care about resolution, but it's important. PC gamers can test it (Console gamers to,but don't forget to disable upscale features in your consoles)!If you have a 1080p monitor and you play at 720p, the image will be blurry, you will miss a lot of detail and you will have more and bigger jaggies. It's important to run games at the native resolution of the screen because everything is as it's should be.

[blumatt]

The Vita is the new king of the hill of handhelds. That screen alone makes it the best one out. Then add a touchpad on the back, dual analog sticks, a gyroscope, an accelerometer, and built-in SixAxis motion controls, and a myriad of other features, and you've got yourself the best handheld around.

[ronin4life]

...what about the most important feature? The one you didn't even think to mention:
The games. In this, looking ahead it still has a way to go against its main competitor.

[despair]

actually the launch and launch window titles are incredible if you get the full list. And its not like there are just crappy games but high budget and hyped games as well. I'm sure some will be crap (ridge racer) but you'll get a fair number of great titles and all this within one month of launch.

It has the games part covered.

[STK026]

I wouldn't say it has a better or worse lineup than the 3DS (its main competitor), but it's most likely the best launch line-up I've ever seen. Well, definately better than the PS3, the 3DS, the Wii or the 360 anyway. However, the 3DS already has a few great games out, and the first half of 2012 seems even better; with plenty of titles announced with a 2012 release date, which means the 3DS will likely have a very strong year all around.

The Vita has quite a few games announced for the launch window, so I have no doubt early adopters will have plenty of games to play on the Vita; the real test will come later this year. Will this onslaught of games continue or will it slow down? Only time will tell.

[ronin4life]

Yes, the launch lineup is impressive. But I was noting the entire lineup of both consoles, from the 3ds launch untill the end of this year side by side.
Stk026 said it better than I did, I think.

[moparful99]

Yes the 3ds has the better catalog currently but it also had a year's head start... There was a huge gap in quality titles for the 3ds this year until nintendo started releasing it's big names for the holiday season... Sony has a tremendous launch lineup and it doesnt deserve to be blasted because it's launch lineup is lacking compared to a year's worth on the 3ds...

[TKCMuzzer]

Who cares about the resolution? If it looks good in front of my eyes that's all that counts, I don't need a website to tell me whether it looks good. The browser? why all the moaning, its a games machine, virtually everyone has a phone that does decent browsing so your never going to go without.
It plays good games, two analogue sticks, beautiful screen...game on.

[lugia 4000]

Shame this isnt getting many attention as its a great piece of an article.

[MasterCornholio]

Even if some titles are rendered at a slightly lower resolution than the screens the games still look amazing for portable titles. If you want to complain about low resolution visuals the 3DS is the one to look at not the Vita because it's resolution is a lot higher than the 3DS.

This article is very good and proves that the Vita is extremely well designed. According to them Sony did everything possible to improve battery life it was impressive to read that they got rid of a lot of notification lights in order to improve it. The guy who designed the Vita did a great job.

XperiaRay

[disturbing_flame]

"But let's bring this back to the original question: is it worth the money? If you're buying the Vita as a flexible multimedia device with the added perk of web browsing functionality, then you'll likely be just as well served by the many tablets and smartphones available today."

Wow, it looks like people working at digital foundry are very smart. Captain obvious flavoured.

So it works also with 3DS ?

In fact guess what, if you want to buy a tablet, well, Digital Foundry thinks it's maybe recommended, yes, to buy a tablet.

Now if you want a device that can be more powerful than an iphone 4S or a lot of the tablets of the market to run games no other device can run, and still you can use this device as a multimedia device; you can buy a Vita.

I think digital foundry forget to say it.

it's fixed now. ;)