PS Vita: General Discussion

[worrati]

As an owner of a PS3 I was eagerly waiting for this to buy a Vita. I'm 44, married, often away for work. Having the possibility to play games on the ps3 and keep progressing also when I'm not home would be really welcome for me. Heard lot of noise on cross play and remote play during launch of vita. And then nothing. So far, I heard just about 1 game with this possibility: MLB 2012 The Show. Nothing else. I'll wait. But while lurking on forums, what sounds strange to me is that it seems none is interested on this feature. As said to me it's a prerequisite to buy the Vita, so fairly important, but if nobody else needs it then I understand Sony not pushing for it. So here I am, asking all of you: isn't the possibility to share saves between ps3 and ps vitasomething you would really like to see ? Or is it just me... .

[BlackKnightUK]

It's already available in other games besides MLB The Show. Motorstorm RC comes to mind and I'm sure there are at least one or two others. Yes it is one of the features being promoted by Sony and yes there will be more games coming out that use it. I believe LittleBigPlanet Vita and the second game on PS3 will have it as will Sony All Stars Battle Royal I believe. Warrior's Lair will also have it. Sound Shapes most likely will too as you get both versions of it for the price of one once they are released, the same goes for Warrior's Lair. I suspect EA will start doing it at some point with their sports games too. In short there are more games coming out that will use it.

[worrati]

Thanks for the reply, sounds encouraging... Is there any site, list, info where it's possible to check if games already out or about to come have this cross save sharing ? Reviews and previews often are not so clear about it, and I really would like not to miss a critical info such this, at least for me...

[BlackKnightUK]

There is no place with concise information. You just have to keep an eye on the official Playstation blog, other gaming sites and forums like this. Sony did have a separate section on PSN for games that support cross play but I don't know if it's still there.

[ryuzu_j]

Metal Gear Solid HD is out in a couple of weeks and that will evidently support cross saves - or transfarring (yes that's an 'a') as Konami occasionally call it. Of course that would mean getting the PS3 collection from earlier in the year.

It seems that the Sly Cooper game will support this too so that's another one to look out for.

Having said that, it seems to me that for Story driven games this is only partially useful since once the story is done there is little reason to wish to transfer saves. However, sports games are pretty replayable and have a career mode so that seems like a great fit - sadly EA don't seem to be pushing this for 2012 iterations.

MLB The Show 2012 works great except for one major issue - it's only available in the US, so unless you plan to use a US based account for both the Vita and PS3 the cross save stuff is monumentally painful :/ A real shame because running the management parts while on the go is a really nice feature.

A little bit from left field but Dust 514 will provide a Vita app that will let you do adminstrative functions (spend money, customise character, social stuff) while away from the PS3, but you'll have to play the actual FPS part on the PS3.

So it is coming, but it is a bit spotty. I'm surprised it is supported as widely as it is - I guess Sony made easy for the cross save feature to be built into the games. 

Rotor.

[worrati]

Huh... Was thinking to buy vita now at least for mlb 2012... As you said sport games can really benefit on cross saves... But now that you're saying this I'm scared... I can buy mlb 2012 here in Italy... But I need to have an us account to enjoy cross saves ?!?

[ryuzu_j]

The Vita is very tightly account controlled - moreso than the PSP just because of the steps required to change accounts.

If you buy MLB 2012 for PS3 and PS Vita, you have to provide an online activation code to get the online portions of the games running - Sony have decided that cross vita/PS3 saves are part of the online functions, so this feeature doesn't work unless you enter the code.

The code of course, is only valid for US accounts....

On PS3 it's fine because the PS3 is console rather than account locked - so you can enter the US code into a US account on your PS3, activate the online and then when you return to your normal Euro account, the online is still unlocked. This is PS3 only though.

On Vita, you must again enter the code into a US account, but that code is locked to the account. If you reset your vita and change to your Euro account, the online portion is not activated.

So, in order for cross saves and online play to work on Vita you must use a US account, and by extension you have to use the same account on PS3.

The PS3 side is no problem since account switching is trivial, but switching back and forth on Vita is painful - you reset the device, enter your wireless key again, login to your PSN account, wait for a 2 min video to finish and you can then enter the game and do the cloud save. Then you have to repeat the steps to get back to your Euro account. Each time you do this your icons are reordered and any screen settings you had are lost

It's not impossible, but it is not smooth.... Each account change on Vita takes about 5 mins. Not a lot of time if you're only doing it occasionally but not something you'd want to do every day....

There were a few grumbles about it over on the MLB forums - the devs looked into it but concluded that non-US accounts are not supported.

Rotor.

[AlexAtkinUK]

Stupid online pass system.   Its crazy that the online pass counts as DLC so comes under the region locking.

[worrati]

In this case I'd wait to see what will happen with EA sport games coming up in the next months... As well as other games as RPGs. Thanks guys for the useful infos ! Nice to get it from the community... Always thought Sony is a good hardware company, not so good software company and really bad marketing company. Well... It's always easy to do the corporate strategist on the internet forums... Anyway... To end my internet corporate strategist career here, final advice is that sony should outsource marketing to the community ;-)

[QuietlyWrong]

For info: LBP Vita will have nothing to do with the PS3 LBP games. So far, the only sharing that has been announced is of DLC costume packs. You won't be able to play the same levels on these systems.