It's always nice to get new features on your PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Portable. However, not everyone looks forward to getting them because they're only delivered through firmware updates that can take a long time to download and install -- updates that sometimes don't even deliver any new features. Sony Computer Entertainment's president of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, knows how frustrating this can be and says there's a chance that Vita owners won't have to deal with this particular problem.
Asked by Game Informer if Vita users will be subjected to as many firmware updates as PS3 and PSP (or if they will at least be less intrusive), Yoshida said, "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."
The answer isn't necessarily to release updates less frequently; Microsoft updates the Xbox 360 only a few times a year at most, and it typically saves up a bunch of features to release in a larger update (as it is with the upcoming Twist Control dashboard update). What Sony may do is simply make it less of a hassle to update the system.
"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."
Yoshida also touched upon some of the recent changes to the 3DS, namely the circle pad attachment and price cut. Some people have attributed both to Vita; it's priced at $249.99 for the Wi-Fi-only model (the same price 3DS was pre-price cut) and one of its key features is its second analog stick. Unfortunately for fanboys, though, Yoshida isn't of the opinion that Nintendo made either move in response to Sony and Vita.
"Well it's not like they looked at PS Vita and said 'we need to do that as well,'" he said of the so-called Frankenstick. "I don't know. It's clear that they didn't believe a second analog was necessary when they designed the 3DS, so I can only guess it was requested by Capcom's side. Maybe a Capcom producer told Nintendo that to play Monster Hunter we need [two] analog sticks. That I don't know, so I can only guesstimate. It was a bit shocking to see what they came up with."
As for the price cut, he said, "I don't personally believe that they dropped the price of the 3DS to respond to our pricing. We didn't price PS Vita to their price, either. We had that plan since the last couple years. My personal guesstimate is that they have their business plan and goals to sell a certain amount of 3DS units, and they realized post-launch was that the pricing was not helping them to achieve the goal that they set. That's my estimate.
"As far as if I'm excited, I'm not sure. If the 3DS sells like crazy and no one is interested in PS Vita, that's a problem. There are lots of analysts talking about, 'Well, you know there are smartphones, there's no need for dedicated portable game machines.' I don't believe it. But if they point to certain performance of the 3DS and say the smartphone is here, it doesn't help us either. I like to see healthy competition between Nintendo's system and ours because it helps innovation. It's always a good thing to have."
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