Playstation Vita Will Finish The Pandora?


MartyB

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The Pandora is great and everything, i keep hearing how it's better than my Caanoo, but seriously. As soon as the Playstation Vita is jailbroken (Which it will be) are all other handhelds finished? Also who would pay for a Pandora when you can get a much more powerful handheld for nearly half the price?

The reason i say this is because i believe it will offer perfect emulation of systems beyond the Cannoo and even the Pandora like the Saturn, N64 and even the Dreamcast.
 
MartyB said:
The Pandora is great and everything, i keep hearing how it's better than my Caanoo, but seriously. As soon as the Playstation Vita is jailbroken (Which it will be) are all other handhelds finished? Also who would pay for a Pandora when you can get a much more powerful handheld for nearly half the price?

The reason i say this is because i believe it will offer perfect emulation of systems beyond the Cannoo and even the Pandora like the Saturn, N64 and even the Dreamcast.
I'm pretty far from an advocate of the Panda, but, don't you think your barking up the wrong tree here? The Panda isn't a gaming console with emulator features. It's a lightweight, ultra portable computer.
I'd rather have a jailbroken Vita myself, and aint in line for a Panda, but still. Your comparing apples with bicycles. Or spaceships.
B!
 
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Mr B said:
MartyB said:
The Pandora is great and everything, i keep hearing how it's better than my Caanoo, but seriously. As soon as the Playstation Vita is jailbroken (Which it will be) are all other handhelds finished? Also who would pay for a Pandora when you can get a much more powerful handheld for nearly half the price?

The reason i say this is because i believe it will offer perfect emulation of systems beyond the Cannoo and even the Pandora like the Saturn, N64 and even the Dreamcast.
I'm pretty far from an advocate of the Panda, but, don't you think your barking up the wrong tree here? The Panda isn't a gaming console with emulator features. It's a lightweight, ultra portable computer.
I'd rather have a jailbroken Vita myself, and aint in line for a Panda, but still. Your comparing apples with bicycles. Or spaceships.
B!

Thats true and the Pandora is impressive, but i think it's main selling point and the reason most people buy Pandoa is for Retro Emulation.
 
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Pandora still has a keyboard, and the usual Linux apps that you won't get on NGP. But yes, a lot of people really are using it for emulators, so if NGP gets the ability to play emulators and the dev scene supersedes PSP's then yes, I expect that given the choice some people will buy it over Pandora. But this could take until 2013 or longer, if ever, and by then I'm not sure if a more upfront Pandora replacement won't be in the works or out, either by OP or someone else.

And I don't fully understand it, but there are always going to be a lot of people who will value a console where the manufacturer endorses unofficial software, vs one where an exploit has to be used to gain access, but where that exploit works everywhere. Look at GP2X - it was released after PSP (after the exploits for it were out, no less) and was worse than PSP in pretty much every way, but still attracted a lot of buyers and eventually ended up having at least a few better emulators despite far fewer people developing for it.
 
I would prefer pandora because it's a serious thing. A computer. And I prefer 3ds to ngp. 3D is great. NGP is amazing but... 3D is more amazing.
 
Preordered a WIFI Model of the Sony PS Vita, but i ditnt think it will be my daily companion like the Pandora,
the Vita is a great Gaming Device, but not as usfull as the Pandora is..

And whitout cracking, you wouldn bee enable to run emulators on the Vita..
 
matzesu said:
And whitout cracking, you wouldn bee enable to run emulators on the Vita..
Thats sort of a prerequisite, included in the first post of the thread. But even as a jailbroken Vita suits me better then the Panda, i still say it's comparing apples with carrots. Or tricycles.
B!
 
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MartyB said:
The Pandora is great and everything, i keep hearing how it's better than my Caanoo, but seriously. As soon as the Playstation Vita is jailbroken (Which it will be) are all other handhelds finished? Also who would pay for a Pandora when you can get a much more powerful handheld for nearly half the price?
Why would you give your money to a company that you have to work around when there's a fledgling company trying to give you exactly what you want?
Granted, the Pandora is slipping technologically, but if nobody bought one then there'd be no market for a second one.
This is colloquially called "voting with your dollars". By buying a Vita over a Pandora, you're sending the message that you are OK with closed systems. If everyone bought the Pandoras and Wizs even at a slightly higher price point, it would send the message "we will pay a little extra for the ability to run whatever we want on it". I much prefer the second message over the first.
 
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WizardStan said:
Why would you give your money to a company that you have to work around when there's a fledgling company trying to give you exactly what you want?
Granted, the Pandora is slipping technologically, but if nobody bought one then there'd be no market for a second one.
This is colloquially called "voting with your dollars". By buying a Vita over a Pandora, you're sending the message that you are OK with closed systems. If everyone bought the Pandoras and Wizs even at a slightly higher price point, it would send the message "we will pay a little extra for the ability to run whatever we want on it". I much prefer the second message over the first.

I'm not really an "ends justify the means" sort of person, but at some point the pragmatic aspect of an issue will outweigh ideology. Not everyone sees hardware devices as a mission statement of liberty. In my case, I don't really care what the company making it does or doesn't want me to do, I care about what the hardware will or won't let me do. So yes, I AM okay with closed systems that are de-facto not closed due to ability to explot.

And I disagree with you, that buying a Pandora over a PSVita sends any kind of tangible message to anyone. Even if sales really did drop from something like this I doubt Sony would make that conclusion. Mind you, this wouldn't happen - devices like Pandora don't have capacity to sell to millions. But you've got to know your market. The ability to run software openly on a device like PSV would always be highly secondary, pretty much by definition. For them to care about the impact this would have to change, but you can't decide what people care about using the device for. Fact is, if you're not buying games Sony has an interest in you NOT buying their handheld in the first place. So you're really not changing anything, you're not convincing anyone else of anything, you're just making yourself feel good about for upholding your ideologies. Since this is pretty far from a moral issue for me I wouldn't really feel any kind of moral victory for it, so..

In the end if someone sells me a superior product for a cheaper price that with minimal effort lets me run the same sorts of things I'm going to buy it I don't really care about their philosophies, unless I'm funding something outright immoral.
 
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That's very true Exophase, but there is the factor that most people who buy a PSRyvita and want to use homebrew on it will also want to play commercial games. This means the system is only useable as a homebrew platform provided hacks are up to date, so that the latest games work, and only if the system can't be locked back up again like the PS3 has been (for now...). At least with a dedicated homebrew platform, you know it'll always work.

However, if you're willing to pay out for a Pandora, you may be willing to pay out for a second PSVulva just for homebrew, so the need of updating to play the latest games disappears.

Still, this is mostly academic, as I doubt Sony will make the PSEvita easily hackable, due to the problems the PSP had. Indeed, I expect the security on the system to be very sophisticated, like the PS3 would have been if they didn't screw up a little bit.
 
I agree, and that's the biggest pragmatic consideration. My stance is all based on the ability to run homebrew on the console without having to constantly hack/update anything.

I'm still hoping Sony will release Android for this. Yeah I know, everyone always responds "they took away OtherOS so of course they won't release Android!" But it's really not the same scenario.
 
Exophase said:
I agree, and that's the biggest pragmatic consideration. My stance is all based on the ability to run homebrew on the console without having to constantly hack/update anything.

I'm still hoping Sony will release Android for this. Yeah I know, everyone always responds "they took away OtherOS so of course they won't release Android!" But it's really not the same scenario.

That would be awesome, but I imagine that they would be worried it would cut into their ps1 classics line, or perhaps their online software sales?
 
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Who's got pockets that big? Especially since you'd need a padded case to protect the exposed analog sticks. As if the PSP wasn't big enough already... :rolleyes:

Still, if this thing has Android it might well be a Pandora killer, yeah. I'm sure it'll be a tad cheaper than the almost 400 quid the Pandora is charging these days, and Android can do most of the day-to-day stuff you want from a handheld. And Sony can't have that much of a problem with Android since they're selling PS1 games on the Xperia Play's online game centre thingie. Let's hope they make the smart choice.
 
Exophase said:
And I disagree with you, that buying a Pandora over a PSVita sends any kind of tangible message to anyone.
Not to Sony or Nintendo, perhaps, but definitely to the people who do want to produce such open devices. "This idea you have is potentially viable" even if it is at small numbers. You can argue that it's worth buying a closed device for cheaper so long as you can crack it, but sooner or later they're going to get it right and you'll be looking for something that is open, but no one is producing such a device because it isn't commercially viable because everyone preferred the cheaper device they could crack. I'd be very surprised if ED, for example, actually invested in the Pandora 2 in the same way he has for this one given the history.
A counter could be that, given a sudden need, someone would find the niche market again and come up with a design, but it would be an entirely new company, making all the same mistakes that every new company makes. Waiting 3 years has already sucked once, I don't relish waiting it again.
And to be clear, I make the same arguments for movies, books, and video games: if there's a particular niche you enjoy, a style and genre that you think could be really good in the hands of the right director, you should go see that movie, read that book, play that game, even if it isn't quite your cup of tea, because if you don't then producers will be less willing to invest in your particular style/genre of choice. I came up with this theory after a friend lamented that a favourite book (the title of which escapes me) of his had been scheduled to be turned into a movie before the project was canceled, a lesser known but epic book I recall, and the reason given for it being canceled was fear that it would do as poorly as some other movie in a similar vein. He asked if he was expected to go see a crappy movie on the chance that it might lead to a better one, and my response was "basically, yes." What was a crappy movie to him was quite enjoyed by others, and what he considers great is no doubt crappy to a different group, but in the end they were both niche movies with tiny markets and big dreams, and if you want producers to keep investing in these epic niche movies you'll have to pay for them. It's a gamble, but if you don't take the gamble, I don't really see grounds to complain when it goes exactly as I describe here.
Anywho, rambling. That's just how my philosophy goes when it comes to niche markets: if you want them to continue to exist, you need to buy into them, sometimes even if it isn't quite your cup of tea. Nothing says you can't buy into alternatives as well, you can buy the Vita if it suits your needs, we don't need to get rid of the Sonys and Nintendos of the world, just have to ensure that the OpenPandoras survive for the future.
 
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if you dont support your artists, then one day, your only choices in music will be lady gaga and lil wayne. a well produced and mastered audio cd isnt cheap to put out on the market
 
DaMummy said:
if you dont support your artists, then one day, your only choices in music will be lady gaga and lil wayne. a well produced and mastered audio cd isnt cheap to put out on the market

Clearly, seeing as the art of production seems to have been lost to Antares Autotune ;).

But there's a difference between supporting homebrew and buying expensive hardware that isn't as good as something cheaper. People will only go so far to support such a thing, and if something better turns up for much less money, people will undoubtedly flock to it instead.
 
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The Pandora's overpriced run at the top will be short lived. Still, it has a keyboard.

But then again so does a Tandy.
 
I'm going to be looking for Nexus Prime + slide out game pad. Whenever that happens. Slim bezel with no hardware face buttons (Home, Menu, Back, Search).

either 4.8 or 5" screen and slightly bigger than the HTC Evo (Height + Width, not depth)

Slap on an extended battery and that's what I am waiting for. Virtual keyboards work fine for me. Plus a nice size display in landscape would make thumb typing pretty nice. Otherwise, I pretty much only use Swype now.

Physical gaming controls are still very much needed though. King of Fighters just came out for iPhone, just makes me scratch my head.
 
The Pandora isn't competing with the Playstation Vita, it's filling a specific niche that the Playstation brand doesn't.
 
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