Minecraft Out This Week - Is it too late for Vita though?

So after months and months of waiting and testing 4J Studios finally tweeted that Minecraft PlayStation Vita Edition has passed final testing and Sony will be releasing it next week on the 15th October. Cause to celebrate or cause to be concerned.

I got my Vita at launch and began a love affair with Sony's wonderful handheld. A love affair that saw me move away from Xbox over to PlayStation 3 and eventually PlayStation 4. Never has a handheld console had such a profound effect on my gaming world.

Recently, though things have not been as good for the Vita. Its fair to say that Sony have forgotten it. No more first party titles are going to be made for it. So the heyday of games like Uncharted, Killzone: Mercenary and Gravity Rush have gone and do look to return. Looking at the coming soon section for the Vita at Metacritic it lists 10 games. Of these ten, six are quirky Japanese games that will only sell to Gamers who want them. The only main stream title is Lego Batman 3, which is going to be a port of the Nintendo 3DS game, hardly utilising the power of the console.



So what is the future for Vita. Well it appears to be a companion device to the PS4. Remote Play is being pushed as the main selling point for PlayStation TV (formerly Vita TV in Japan). My experience of remote play is not very good. It constantly freezes and disconnects making it pretty useless, unless I am sat in the same room as the console or router. Now I know this is due to the set-up of my house and the network in it. The problem is this is how I have to have it. I cannot change it.

That leaves cross-buy games on the store. With the likes of Rogue Legacy and Velocity 2x the cross platform experience works well. This quality cannot be said across all of the PS4/PSVita cross buy titles. Counterspy and Pix the Cat capture the same gameplay as their PS4 counterpart, but suffer from longer load times and the controls do not feel as responsive, making for a diminished overall experience. Cross-cut seems to be the future for the console now, as a day rare goes past without another indie title being announced over at the PlayStation Blog coming to PS4 and PS Vita.

So for the first time since owning one, I am looking at it and thinking "It it time to trade you in and go back to a 3DS?" Which is shame because I believe that Vita still has huge potential. Sony have failed to find the right place for the Vita in their scheme. The huge success of the PlayStation 4 has helped with this as Sony are quite rightly focusing on that.

For me though, I will take Minecraft next week (it's free for me) and I hope that it delivers what I had hoped to playing a year ago. I fully expect thought that this maybe the last time I get to look forward to a new release on the Vita. A sad thing to have to admit.