Well, Bloodborne would depend on how much you care for the Souls series. I was looking to import Demon's Souls when they announced the western version, since then I've been a massive fan and followed the whole series, Bloodborne included. Beyond that there isn't much else as far exclusives, what else can you get? The Order 1886? Knack?

To be honest, I completely forgot about a PS3 version. I feel like a lot of PS4/PS3/Vita japanese games when they come to the US end up being PS4 only, or PS4/Vita only at most, so I just didn't think of it as a possibility. It still says PS3 on the Atlus US website, but they were also swearing on their mothers' lives that the game was coming in October 2015 and it would be a simultaneous release, until Atlus Japan in September delayed it for a whole year in Japan, and even more than that in the West.

I'd say don't hold your breath. If it comes, great, but Atlus US is at the whims of the Japan branch and they can change everything at a moment's notice.

Just to comment... the PSP was far more popular and useful and interesting to use when it was cracked, when you could do custom software and run music and videos and make your own themes...

The Vita doesn't have to die; If it opened up and stopped being so proprietary and closed, then it could turn around and be quite popular.

RIP dolce Vita ^_^

Too bad we can't change the propriety nature of the memory so easily like the PSP. There's supposedly been people looking into it for a long time now but it doesn't seem like it's gone great so far.

I was mostly eluding to that if Sony really wanted to salvage the Vita, they have an easy way just by opening it up as a tinkering platform. Truthfully there will probably be some unpaid for games, however the system would explode in popularity, and if the free software development kit were made public, you can bet people would make games or apps for it. Having an on-the-go emulation system is probably more valuable.

It's a shame it didn't get more support; I bought a Vita and 3ds around the same time a few years ago and I definitely preferred the feel and hardware of the Vita. But while there were some great games on it, there just weren't enough to keep me occupied and I ended up selling it.

It looked great from an input perspective. How is the homebrew or hacking scene for it?
Is it possible to get some form of dosbox on it to play gog games etc or any similar devices to do that?

Very good, but not for the current version. There is a hack for firmware v3.60 (older versions can be manually updated to 3.60) which allows for various emulators and now PSP games as of last Friday.

I'm sorry to hear that about Persona 4. The jump from 2 to 3 was so impressive that it really made me look forward to the next installments, but I didn't like 2 at all and 3 became very repetitive very fast so I didn't even finish it. Can't bet on it blowing my mind then, but I'll still play it once I get the chance. I'm in no hurry though. I recently got Suikoden 2 for the PSP and that's slugging around anyway, so it's a long time until I need another portable game.

Regarding spoilers, I assume it has to do with where we hang out. My only online interactions are typically on this forum, so I'm not exposed to much hubris (other than the usual trolls).

And I think I'll end the conversation there as we've said what we had to say regarding it. Any more than this and my general disdain for consoles will rear its ugly head, and that would bring us nowhere.

I know well what you meant during the first portion. In terms of homebrew and sales we've already seen what that could do thanks to the PSP. Sony just seems highly averse to fostering that sort of scene and thinking about it I've never seen a major console manufacturer openly take to that mindset either. Personally I'm interested in seeing the scene grow because that means A) Clocking the processor ourselves can fix up some of the problems with some of the games I mentioned earlier (BL2, RE:R2) and B) The underground translation scene would actively grow for the Vita.

The main reason they wouldn't just come out and do that though is because of the obvious piracy concerns and how much that may bother the groups that remain working on the system officially. The fact that there was finally some hacking of the system at last has supposedly caused concerns for some groups working on it officially. Also just because it's "dead" in the west doesn't mean that holds entirely true in Asia. Just like the Saturn post '97-'98, the weak activity in the west doesn't fully represent that it still has decent enough support in its homeland. As the article highlighted though, once the major updates stop coming for the system the homebrew scene will be able to open it up more to the public. So soon enough.

Yeah.. It still is a fantastic handheld in its own right. :(

yeah thats the second most important reason why vita didn't become as successful as psp, but i blame sony for that too. i believe that sony somehow got in contact to the vita hacker scene, bribed and threatened important members of the scene to not release anything of matter, thats why the vita didn't get any native hack until summer 2016. soo many potential customers didnt buy the vita cause they waited for a hack first. and btw if someone wants to see how great gaming is on a vita, they just need to play kz mercenary and golden abyss. there could have been so many great games on the vita :(

If I remember correctly some Vita games were even ported for 3DS in Europe because no one owned one. I still want to get one at some point. I'm just too japanophile to pass on a lot of the Vita (and PSP games).

Okay, this is needlessly reductive. Of course they had a reason to crack down on hacks, they make no money from piracy.

The Vita was sold at a loss in order to bring it down to a reasonable price, if there was little software sales from the console being easily hacked they would have just bled money.

I can't find any information as to whether or not the PSP was sold at a loss, but even if it wasn't, I guarantee you, Sony saw almost no profit from hacked PSPs, and they had no reason not to crack down on it.

If you mean hacking for reasons other than piracy, that's another matter, but how much money they would have made from owners of hacked Vitas buying legitimate games is debatable, especially when compared to opening the door for piracy.