Aside form the relative lack of games, the Nintendo 3DS’ biggest problem is its far-too-short battery life. Under ideal circumstances, you’ll get 3-5 hours of actual continuous gaming from the device. I think Sony’s new handheld is a fantastic, sleek and sexy bit of kit – filled to the brim with fancy features..but those features come at a cost; because the Vita will also only have enough juice on a full charge to give you “3-5 hours†of gaming joy.
It gets worse.
You’ll get "3 -5 hours" for games, approximately "5 hours" for video, and approximately 9 hours for music "in stand-by mode." That’s with all connectivity such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G turned off, headphones instead of speakers and the "default†screen brightness setting. Lord alone knows what sort of usage you’ll get should you want to play multi-player on the go. That’s…just not long enough. Nintendo made up for it (somewhat) by including a charging dock, making it dead simple to keep the 3DS charged. For the Playstation Vita, it’s a separate $35 accessory.
While we’re on the subject of wildly expensive accessories, be prepared to spend more on the Vita than you expected to; the unit ships without internal storage of any sort.Nothing. NADA. The device does have a memory card slot for storage, but it’s a a proprietary format – and you know what that means? exorbitantly high prices. Here’s a list of the Vita memory cards that’ll be available post launch – with Yen, US dollars and Rand values.
- Memory Card 4GB ¥2,200, $29, R215
- Memory Card 8GB ¥3,200, $42, R310
- Memory Card 16GB ¥5,500, $71, R525
- Memory Card 32GB ¥9,500, $124, R915
Of course, we can expect the actual prices when it is available in south Africa to be much higher. It’s a little ridiculous because standard SD cards of those sizes come in at a third of the price. With the Vita’s ability,and indeed focus on downloadable games – including specially developed Android titles – this comes as a bit of a disappointment.
Source: Joystiq
Last Updated: September 16, 2011
