PlayStation Vita set to sink on the maiden voyage – Video Games Feature
Sony must be in hot water as it was confirmed yesterday on PSXscene that hackers have successfully managed to crack the PS Vita and dump the authoring keys.
Sony blames homebrew for the demise of the PlayStation Portable (PSP) as the handheld, even though it was technically superior to Nintendo’s DS, could not compete in the market and got smashed in sales. The reason behind this was the lack of games when compared
to those available for the DS.
Analysts claimed that many developers jumped ship from PSP to the DS when Sony’s handheld got hacked as it meant that gamers could just download games for free and play them directly from the memory card without having to purchase an original UMD. The PSP
hack also lead to many homebrew emulators for the handheld which gave gamers the option to play old school Nintendo, Sega and PlayStation 1 games. The downside of this was that it greatly affected software sales for the product.
A weak attachment rate for the handheld discouraged the developers to develop for the Vita and they started to focus on the Nintendo DS instead. This eventually led to decreasing sales for the handheld because gamers would opt to get a DS instead.
The PSP was no slouch when it came to sales with over 74.6 million units sold since launch, but the number is dwarfed by the Nintendo DS sales as Nintendo’s handheld ranks as the second best selling gaming device in the history of gaming with over 152 million
units sold. Sony released many revisions of the PSP in order to combat p****y but unfortunately all the hardware revisions also fell victim to the hacking groups and custom firmwares.
Now it seems that the PlayStation Vita is headed in a similar direction since a user on PSXscene called ‘deroad’ had posted PS Vita Tools 1.06 on the PSXscene website and has also published Vita authoring keys. This means that hackers and homebrew developers
have the necessary tools to sign their own code to run on the handheld. The PS Vita will be getting emulators of its own soon enough and there is also a chance that this will enable many hacking scene groups to release a custom firmware for the handheld which
will allow gamers to pirate games.
This news must have been a huge blow to Sony as the company was struggling with the handheld since its launch and there were already rumours afloat that developers were considering jumping ship again and move their projects onto the Nintendo 3DS and the
Wii-U. The fact that the handheld was cracked so quickly in its life certainly spells danger for Sony unless they fix the security holes with a firmware update as soon as possible.
Gamers are calling this the final nail in the coffin for the Vita and believe that the handheld will not be able to survive if it loses developer support so quickly as the handheld is lacking a decent games library as of right now.
This news has also pleased many fans of homebrew as they believe that they will finally have a use for the device once emulators are up and running. It is believed that the PS Vita could support PlayStation 2 emulation because of its superior hardware as
Sony has not added official backwards compatibility in the device because the company probably wants to resell remakes of older games.
Sony has not commented on the hack so far but has stated that it has a lot of games in the pipeline for the Vita and the handheld’s best months are ahead.
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