Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Console Post Of The Week: All Over the Place

Now there's this:
Sony Tablet S update lets you play with PS3 controllers, cable adapter required

An excerpt:
The latest update to the company's divisive Tablet S will let you connect your DualShock 3 PS3 controllers with those 32-bit games of yesteryear.

Announcements like this seem to be coming about every 15 minutes now as everyone races to turn phones/tablets into auxiliary game machines. But why not design a custom Android controller, for example, for Android tablets? A controller that might be less bulky than a 360/PS3 controller, but with a reasonable subset of the functionality.

The Vita (not a console, so we're in sidetracked mode now) launched in Japan last week and, according to Media Create, sold 325,000 units in the first two days. That's out of a total shipment of either 500,000 or 700,000 (Sony may have boosted the launch shipment at the last minute, but there's no hard confirmation). Here are a few more launch details:
Media Create boss Atsushi Hosokawa blamed the relatively slow start on Vita's price, which, when you include a game and the required accessories (a memory card is required to play most games), means the system costs 40,000 yen (£328). He added a lack of a system seller at launch hampered its appeal.

"The shipment was abundant," he said. "So it seems that there were hardly any reports of inability to buy due to shortages. Regarding sold units, to be honest we would like to have seen it sell a bit more, but you can say that it reached a certain level of success."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but there's no question that the Vita is a hardware powerhouse, and there will be plenty of software support, so if it does fail, it will be price-based, not "lack of ass-kicking" based.

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