So I cancelled my Vita pre-order......

Yesterday I finally did something I had been meaning to do for some time; I cancelled my Playstation Vita Pre-Order. Last year when the Vita was first announced I immediately went to Amazon and pre-ordered it. It looked like, and still is, an incredible piece of hardware. A beautiful OLED screen, front and rear touch screens, two analog sticks (finally), and some pretty impressive horsepower behind the scenes. The price-point is also solid at $250 for the Wi-Fi version. Most importantly, the games look phenominal and not just ‘phenominal for a handheld’, but phenominal period.

So why did I cancel my pre-order? A couple of reasons;

The first reason has to do with game pricing/value proposition. As of today, Vita games are anywhere from $30 to $50. In some cases, such as Uncharted: Golden Abyss, I’m sure these prices reflect the development costs of creating games that almost as good as their home console brethren. But, as good as Uncharted:GA looks, I have a hard time believing that it looks 7-8 times better than Infinity Blade 2 which is only 6 bucks on the iTunes store. In fact, I`d say Infinity Blade 2 looks just as good as Uncharted.

In fact, for the price of Uncharted you could get Infinity Blade 2, Grand Theft Auto 3, Reckless Racing, Death Rally, Real Racing 2 HD, Bike Baron and Edge. All of those are top notch, graphically intensive, quality games. That doesn’t even include the regular iTunes sales where you can get many of those games for 99 cents (and so could even add more games for the price of Uncharted).

Or, comparing apples to apples; Ridge Racer for the Vita is $30 and, by many accounts, is a piece of garbage. For one sixth of the price (and again, on sale for less -  I got it for 99 cents!) you could get Real Racing 2 for the iPhone which has 30 different cars, 15 tracks, a 5-7 hour career mode, looks gorgeous, and plays like a gem just using the touch screen and the accelerometer.

The second reason I cancelled my pre-order has to do with the handheld gaming experience itself or more succinctly, what I want from handheld games personally.

The main selling point of the Vita is the fact that it can bring PS3 quality, and type, games to the portable space. 

The thing is, for me at least, if I actually have the time to play games then I want to be sitting on the couch getting the full experience on a home console with my TV and surround sound, rather than hunched over a small screen, headphones in my ear while my wife screams at me to take out the garbage.

Now if I commuted to work and had to spent 30-40 minutes sitting on a train this may be a different story, but as it stands, if I’ve got more than 10 minutes to play games, I would rather do so sitting on my couch or in front of my PC. If I only have a few minutes to burn then I’d want to play something brief and bite-sized like Bike Barron, Drop 7 or Spell Tower - rather than a facsimile of a home console experience. What’s the point of playing 90 seconds of a Grand Theft Auto game? You wouldn’t even get past a cut-scene!

So despite the fact that the iPad and iPhone do have many games that compare to home console-type titles - I rarely play them. I spend far more of my time playing bite sized games such as those I mentioned and for those, my phone (or tablet) is just fine.

That said, don’t think for a minute I won’t be tempted the novelty of new tech and that gorgeous OLED screen come Vita launch day....I do have a Y chromosome after all!

L