PS Vita & PS TV & PS VR

I heard that there is a new hack out for the PS Vita / PS TV and I immediately ran to the closet and dusted off my PS TV lol.....It's ironic because a couple weeks ago I was going to trade it in towards an Xbox One. I had feeling it would be hacked (again) in the future so that was the only reason it didn't get sent to the Gamestop graveyard. There is a new hack out for firmware 3.60 called Henkaku for the vita system which enables homebrew and also enables the white list for the PS TV. All of this is exciting and sad all at the same time because Sony is most likely going to patch this immediately and that makes no fuckin sense to me. Why does that make no sense , because Sony messed up the Vita, it's like they hung it out to dry way too early, and PS TV was a joke.

I got a PSP when I was a freshman in college and I really liked it, the loading times were terrible but the games and graphics were great at the time. The only thing I didn't like was that it only had one analog stick which severely limited games like Madden or adventure games which you had to press extra buttons to substitute the lack of 2 analog sticks. So fast forward a couple years and Sony drops the Vita. I bought one used on craigslist as soon as I got the money up for it. For $150, I got the Vita, a carrying case and a 32 gb memory card (at that time , the cost of a 32 gb card was $150), which was a great deal. First game I downloaded was Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 which I bought before I had the system, I thought it was great, it basically looked like the PS3 version. Having a device like the vita and having console quality gaming on the go was a dream. Unfortunately, games were to far apart, a lot of the proposed games such as Zone of the Enders was cancelled. Over time I lost interest in it, I was disappointed by the lack of games. It didn't make sense to me, here you have a very powerful portable console that was capable of console quality graphics and there were no games. 

I think the rise of the smartphone dealt a huge blow to the vita's success, everyone started gaming on their phones, so why by a vita when I can use my phone to play the same game or similar one. The other blow was from Sony themselves, Sony can be their own worst enemy and they truly screwed up the vita. The vita price at $250 was not that bad, it was reasonable considering the tech at the time, the price for the memory was outrageous, $150 for a 32 gb card while you could get 32 gb sd card for $40 (at the time). Sony made the same mistake from the PSP, they used a proprietary format that only could be used in their devices. At least with the memory stick duo (from the PSP era), there were other devices that can use the format such as cameras and computers however these vita memory cards could not be used in anything else but the vita. I get it, they wanted to combat piracy by using a format that only they can control (unlike the 3ds which got hacked left & right) but it backfired, the costs of memory cards significantly increased the cost of owning a vita. 

Sony also made matters worse when they began reducing support for the vita, they stopped making first party games and they started removing apps such as YouTube and Facebook. I'm thinking why would they start neglecting the device like that. There was ray of hope when PS4 dropped and remote play access for every game was promised (unlike what they did with the PS3) however it was too little, too late. Although the remote play works, I barely used the feature because that's not the reason why I bought the vita. Games are barely being released at the moment unless they are indies (which people can play on their phone) or RPGs and slowly the vita is turning in to the Dreamcast.

Let me talk about the PS TV for a minute, Sony went out of their way to make the PS TV unsuccessful. They had a very small amount of apps available for streaming, only Crackle when it was launched. No Netflix, no Hulu (it was released months later), no YouTube and on top of that barely any games worked. There were many games that were not allowed to be downloaded because the incompatibility / lack of touch screen, however some games were blocked for no reason especially games that require use of touch screen like Mortal Kombat. There was only 1 gb of internal memory which was another mistake that they continued on the PS TV, they could've at lease included 8 gb on the internal memory. I'm not sure what Sony's intentions were with the PS TV, they touted it as a way to remote play your PS4 on another tv (which was the main reason I bought one) however the WiFi card that they used is too weak to actually use the feature. The remote play is basically unusable , it should almost be classified as false advertisement, PlayStation Now is also barely playable. The PS TV was a huge disappointment and basically has been abandoned by Sony.

Seeing how Sony has dealt with the PSP and PS Vita, I'm very skeptical on buying the PS VR. I think that if doesn't get an immediate positive response, Sony will abandon. I understand that the PS4 is Sony's golden goose but they need to have some sort of quality control, they have to some sort of loyalty to the consumers who support. Sony also has to stop sabotaging their own products, they can't be greedy because it always backfires on them (such as the initial price of the PS3).