Shuhei Yoshida, Sony’s President of Worldwide Studios, confirmed last week via Twitter that the PS Vita would be region-free.
Earlier this year, Gaming Bus reported the PS Vita’s being region-free
was a possibility. This was unsubstantiated at the time because Sony
Worldwide Studios Europe Vice President Michael Denny made what sounded
like a confirmation but then added at the end, “to the best of my
knowledge.”
Over the weekend, Shuhei Yoshida talked to Gameinformer about the PS
Vita. The interview talked about many features for the unit and
specifically about a sore spot with the PS3 and PSP owners:
Gameinformer: Speaking of security, can we expect the Vita to need as
many updates as the PSP and PS3? Are there plans to make these firmware
updates less intrusive?
Shuhei Yoshida: I agree, it’s very annoying when you only have one hour
in your busy life to play a game, and when you have to spend 30 minutes
out of that one hour to update the hardware. So it’s not necessarily the
frequency of how we update, it’s like you said – intrusiveness – of the
current processes that we have on PS3 and PSP. I cannot talk about
specific plans, but we are very aware of the issues, and we’d like to
address those issues on PS Vita going forward.
In the same interview, Shuhei confirmed that PSP games will be given a new opportunity to live on the PS Vita:
Gameinformer: What options will there be for owners of original PSP games to play them on the Vita?
Shuhei Yoshida: Downloadable PSP games will play on the Vita. We are
going through the process of testing that, so we can’t say there will be
100 percent compatibility, but we are looking at a very high
compatibility percentage for downloadable versions of PSP games on PS
Vita. In addition, because PS Vita has a much larger, nicer-looking
screen, and the existence of dual analog sticks, we will provide from a
system level that some games benefit using the right analog stick. Like
FPS or third-person action-adventure games. We will provide options to
remap the control from either face buttons or the action buttons to
right analog stick. So the control would be much better on PS Vita.
Unfortunately, it was also confirmed that Sony is currently not working on a UMD solution out side of Japan:
Gameinformer: So is there a chance that owners of the physical UMDs will have a way to play the game on the Vita?
Shuhei Yoshida: We just announced that we are working on something like
that for the Japanese market. We are still working on the details of the
program, so we will inform the details of the plan for the Japanese
market. But we haven’t decided if we’re going to do something similar
outside Japan.
Analysis: This news about the PS Vita is bittersweet. Too many times
have we heard Sony say a feature would be supported and then back peddle
on it, like OtherOS and UMD. I have little doubt that the PS Vita will
remain region-free for games, but UMD provided region lockouts with
movies. Sony will quickly axe a feature if they feel it gives the
consumer too much flexibility, and this region-free feature will likely
be the first to be cut.
Read More: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Earlier this year, Gaming Bus reported the PS Vita’s being region-free
was a possibility. This was unsubstantiated at the time because Sony
Worldwide Studios Europe Vice President Michael Denny made what sounded
like a confirmation but then added at the end, “to the best of my
knowledge.”
Over the weekend, Shuhei Yoshida talked to Gameinformer about the PS
Vita. The interview talked about many features for the unit and
specifically about a sore spot with the PS3 and PSP owners:
Gameinformer: Speaking of security, can we expect the Vita to need as
many updates as the PSP and PS3? Are there plans to make these firmware
updates less intrusive?
Shuhei Yoshida: I agree, it’s very annoying when you only have one hour
in your busy life to play a game, and when you have to spend 30 minutes
out of that one hour to update the hardware. So it’s not necessarily the
frequency of how we update, it’s like you said – intrusiveness – of the
current processes that we have on PS3 and PSP. I cannot talk about
specific plans, but we are very aware of the issues, and we’d like to
address those issues on PS Vita going forward.
In the same interview, Shuhei confirmed that PSP games will be given a new opportunity to live on the PS Vita:
Gameinformer: What options will there be for owners of original PSP games to play them on the Vita?
Shuhei Yoshida: Downloadable PSP games will play on the Vita. We are
going through the process of testing that, so we can’t say there will be
100 percent compatibility, but we are looking at a very high
compatibility percentage for downloadable versions of PSP games on PS
Vita. In addition, because PS Vita has a much larger, nicer-looking
screen, and the existence of dual analog sticks, we will provide from a
system level that some games benefit using the right analog stick. Like
FPS or third-person action-adventure games. We will provide options to
remap the control from either face buttons or the action buttons to
right analog stick. So the control would be much better on PS Vita.
Unfortunately, it was also confirmed that Sony is currently not working on a UMD solution out side of Japan:
Gameinformer: So is there a chance that owners of the physical UMDs will have a way to play the game on the Vita?
Shuhei Yoshida: We just announced that we are working on something like
that for the Japanese market. We are still working on the details of the
program, so we will inform the details of the plan for the Japanese
market. But we haven’t decided if we’re going to do something similar
outside Japan.
Analysis: This news about the PS Vita is bittersweet. Too many times
have we heard Sony say a feature would be supported and then back peddle
on it, like OtherOS and UMD. I have little doubt that the PS Vita will
remain region-free for games, but UMD provided region lockouts with
movies. Sony will quickly axe a feature if they feel it gives the
consumer too much flexibility, and this region-free feature will likely
be the first to be cut.
Read More: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
