News 19 Comments Sony PS Vita may not be the 'social gaming revolution' we were hoping for

As more details come to light about Sony's upcoming PlayStation Vita handheld gaming system, our hopes of a (as Sony put it) "Social Gaming Revolution" are fading fast. EuroGamer has gathered new details about the console's online capabilities, but honestly, there's nothing truly revolutionary here.

First, there's the feature called Near, which is comparable to the Nintendo's 3DS StreetPass, with a gifting system built in. It tracks your location, and allows you to learn a bit about the Vita owners that are nearby you (what games they've played recently, for one). You can leave gifts in the locations you visit each day, and as other Vita owners visit those same locations, they may be able to pick up said gifts and use them in-game. While it's a novel concept, let's not forget that check-in applications like Gowalla have had item drop-and-pick-up features for quite some time. Besides, the entire virality of Near is dependent on having people within your geographical area that have purchased a Vita, so if you live in a rural neighborhood, your interactions will likely be limited.

Another feature is called Party, and it will allow you to talk with up to three of your friends in a "platform-wide" party, regardless of what you or your friends are doing elsewhere on your Vitas at the time. Again, this is fairly self-explanatory, as Xbox Live's Party Chat and Skype offer two major examples of similar systems.

Finally, there's the LiveArea and Activity trackers, which bring a bit of a Facebook-like setup to the system, as you'll be able to see activities listed in a sort of feed, including posts for when users unlock trophies or reach new leaderboard rankings, and will allow you to comment on them. LiveArea will also allow developers to interact with users, as they can push through announcements of updated content, or even DLC that has been released, and will track users' locations for as-of-now unannounced location features.

As individual systems, these don't really leave much for us to get excited about in the "revolution" column. Sure, cross-game chatting is great, and the Near gifting system should allow users in very active areas to earn in-game items otherwise unavailable to them, but revolutionary? While these combined packages are likely to please many fans, I'm not so sure the adjective fits. We'll make sure to keep track of how Sony further develops the Vita's online and social capabilities, and we can only hope it has more hiding up its sleeve.

Sony shows off social savvy with Japanese PlayStation social network

Sony Play Community
But we doubt it's as fly as our mad alliteration skillz. Sony Computer Entertainment Japan has revealed a web-based social network for its players. Andriasang reports that the new section of the Japanese PlayStation website is called "Play Community," and it serves as a social network for fans. Players can make friends, form groups and send messages to others through the new PlayStation-centric social network.

Most importantly, however, is that users can seek out other players for game sessions and create a "My Page" with a list of the games they play. This all sounds vaguely familiar--wait, didn't Microsoft just update its Xbox website with a social network of sorts? Why yes, yes it did. Just as Google+ and Facebook have started a duel when it comes to games, could it be that Sony and Microsoft have walked their paces?

It certainly seems that way. (Gentlemen, prepare your slapping gloves!) To jump start use of the new website, Sony has offered PlayStation Vita systems to three people--Japanese, we assume--who register with the network, make three friends and submit a comment to this blog post. Unfortunately, there's no word of Play Community hitting Western shores. But considering Sony looks to take the "social gaming revolution" worldwide with the Vita, we can't imagine this portion not following suit.

PS Vita to usher the 'social gaming revolution' stateside next February

Sony has played up the console's social features more than its powerful hardware, which, of course, has piqued our interest. The company seems to consider the PS Vita's social gaming features "revolutionary". While some of us may not buy it, the most notable of which is Near, a feature that allows the system to communicate with nearby PS Vita consoles. Through this, players can compete in local multiplayer matches, share in-game gifts (like on Facebook?) and compare players statistics.