Editorial: How About a Playstation Switch

I’m not going to harp too long on the Vita and it’s unfortunate death. The Vita was a great hand held machine and it shouldn’t have been thrown to the wayside like it has been. A big reason for that was the lack of support, both from developers and eventually Sony themselves. Which really is very unfortunate. The Vita is a powerful little hand held and had a lot of potential.

The Switch on the other hand is doing very well. Even if it is kind of a different beast altogether. And I expect it will keep doing well even with the light run of the games there is available so far. People that own a Switch have nothing but good things to say about it. Since it’s Nintendo’s current console, I’m sure there will be plenty of support for it as well. The interesting thing about the Switch is the technology.

The main draw of the Switch is the blurring of the lines between a home console and a hand held. If you’re at home you can throw it in it’s dock and play on your TV. Or lay on the couch and play it hand held style. Even better, take it on your morning commute. The point is you have high quality games at your fingertips (no pun intended) and that’s an awesome thing. It’s what the Vita was supposed to be.

At the time of the Vita release you could play ps3 quality games (most games looked good but were smaller versions of other games) all in the palm of your hands. The Vita was also capable of connecting to the PS3 in various ways to somewhat mixed results. It was a bit rough around the edges, but the whole concept was having that connectivity and being able to play on your TV or on the go.

Then the PS4 came around and a lot was promised with the Vita and the PS4 working together even better then before. The concept was great but was never fully executed. It was shortly after this that the Vita was put on the back burner. Developers started slowing down on support for the system and it has been slowly fading into the back ground.

It is really disappointing to be honest. There was a lot promise with the Vita and the things it could do for us as gamers. Even now, almost 6 years later, the Vita has a lot of potential. It’s a powerful little machine and has aged quite well. But while Sony hasn’t made it official or anything, the Vita is pretty much dead in the water.

The Switch might bring some light to us hopeful gamers. Sony has had a tendency to take ideas from other companies, namely Nintendo, over the years. Don’t get me wrong here, I realize they have some original ideas. Just bear with me for a minute.

Nintendo has walked their own road for quite some time now. The Wii especially made it so Nintendo broke away from the console race and they just did their own thing. The Wii brought motion controls to the game (again no pun intended. Okay maybe a little.) and brought a whole new way for people to play games.

Of course, it wasn’t too long until Sony followed suit with the Playstation Move controllers (and Microsoft with the Kinect) . They created a controller that was essentially the same thing as the Wii remotes but worked better and were supposedly a step up in quality.

And then it wasn’t too long after that the Vita came out as a direct competitor to the 3DS. Again, it boasted much more robust features and better technology. And some could argue it’s a superior machine, but that’s a discussion for another time.

This track record of being competitive makes me wonder if we’ll get another example of this, how shall I put it, copying? Borrowing?

Could we get a “Playstation Switch” in the future? Think about it for a second. What if we got a hand held, say something like the Vita, that could connect to your TV or at least the PS4. You could play PS4 quality games on it. And the technology Tyler talks about here could be implemented so you could play any of the games on both the new handheld and the PS4 (and later consoles) and could switch seamlessly.

What if we got something like the Vita that actually did what was promised? What if the Nintendo Switch influenced Sony again? Could Sony make another new “console” like the switch only better? That would be great. And part of me hopes that they do something like this eventually. The other part of me is a bit reluctant however. If the “Playstation Switch” has the same fate as the Move and the Vita then maybe they shouldn’t even bother.

As much as I, and I’m sure many other gamers, would like to get something similar to the Switch from Sony, I’m not sure it would be worth it. Having a hand held that really could play console quality games and really could connect to your TV in practical and simple ways and really had the support of developers behind it would be amazing! But it’s probably just a pipe dream. It’s probably just wishful thinking.

What do you think? Should we get a “Playstation Switch”?