'The first PSP had 32 MG of RAM and we have about ten times that now', says studio boss
Sony’s alleged reduction to PS Vita’s RAM capacity won’t harm developers working with the system, a Sony studio partner has said.
Dani Sánchez-Crespo, the CEO of PSP games studio Novarama, told Develop that the upcoming PS Vita handheld will “have a whole lot of headroom in terms of GPU power, CPU power and indeed RAM”.
But he appeared to confirm that Sony has lowered the RAM capacity of the device since its initial spec sheet was sent to developers.
Asked if the alleged RAM cut will affect Novarama’s own projects, Sánchez-Crespo said: “no that won’t affect us. It’s actually good for developers to work under constraint. Generally for Vita, we still have a whole lot of headroom in terms of GPU power, CPU power and indeed RAM”.
“Remember the PSP had 32 MG of RAM, we have about ten times that now,” he claimed.

“And the system’s battery life, by the way, is really good. You’d think with all the processing power that it would drain fast, but it’s fantastic”.
Sony has never publicly announced the internal memory capacity for its next generation handheld, though it was initially believed to be at 512MB.
Yet in May it was speculated that the platform holder had reduced the system’s memory capacity by half to 256MB.
Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida implied the reduction claim was not entirely accurate.
"Do not believe everything you read on the Internet," he said.
Sánchez-Crespo told Develop that reducing certain PS Vita features could ultimately be helpful to his studio.

“Remember, more hardware features means more costs for buying the handheld. Our main interest is for Sony to sell a lot of [PS Vita] units. Clearly the Sony guys in Japan have a tough job of what to leave in and what to leave out."
‘WE BELIEVE IN VITA’

Sánchez-Crespo’s studio Novarama, which recently announced an exclusivity deal with Sony, is not prioritising PS Vita development for now. The Barcelona studio will first complete the Invizimals 3 project for PSP.
It is likely a key factor in this decision is the PSP’s strong position within the wider games market. The cut-price unit has already sold to a broad consumer demographic, and the theory is that PS Vita’s first wave of buyers would mainly comprise of core gamers.
That means family-oriented games, such as Invizimals, may live longer on the older PSP platform.
But Sánchez-Crespo’s faith in the handhled’s successor was made abundantly clear.
“We really believe in the plan that Sony is putting together for PS Vita. We were stunned when we first got our hands on the handheld,” he said.
“I think the price point was spot-on, when I found out about what they were selling Vita for I was delighted. For a really powerful, slick machine, this is a very aggressive price point.”

http://www.develop-online.net/news/3...ifbh+(Develop) ...

Hi all its been too long but the hacking of the site a few months ago made us update security features and to the latest version of vbulletin.

One of the downsides was a massive loss of positions in Google which is one reason for the bringing back of all the DCEmu Network sites whilst keeping the new DCEmu CMS system..

But also since then no one has been able to register and even get their lost passwords back.

finally last night Martin traced the bug that caused this and that side of the site is now working properly again, thank god.

Ill be sending an August newsletter out detailing all the recent news and fixes on DCEmu in the next few days.

This weekend im hoping to bring back the remaining sites inc the coders sites and open new ones covering PSvita, 3DS, WiiU.

Thanks for now. ...

Sony has confirmed that consumers will be able to get hands-on time with PlayStation Vita at Gamescom.

The Cologne event will mark the first time the company's new handheld has been made available to the public. It has previously been announced that gamers would not be able to try the device out for themselves until Tokyo Game Show in September.

The inclusion of playable Vita at Sony's Gamescom stand was confirmed by a Sony PR representative to VG247. No details have been given on what titles will be showcased.

Gamescom will be held in Cologne, Germany, and runs from Wednesday, August 17th to Sunday, August 21st. The public will only be able to attend from Thursday, August 18th onwards.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/vita-...om-2011/082488 ...

Between its Near, Party, LiveArea and Activity social features, there's a whole lot going on under the hood of the PlayStation Vita. SCEE R&D exec Phil Rogers broke down those capabilities at Develop last week: Near, for instance, will allow Vita owners to look at the favorite games of nearby players, and allow players to drop and pick up "gifts," which could range from special in-game items to high score challenges.

Rogers explained that Party will give players cross-game chat capabilities, allowing them to invite friends to groups and launch games directly through the UI, which all party members will be invited to. The LiveArea is a tad more esoteric: it will display information about software as it is launched, and will allow users to "comment on people's activities within the game as well as publish your messages." Sounds like the perfect receptacle for smack talk.

Finally, the Activity feed will show the in-game accomplishments of friends (including high scores and Trophy unlocks) in real time. The feed can also be updated by publishers and developers, though Rogers suggested, "it's important not to spam users too much and to use it sensibly." We pray that Rogers' advice is heeded.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/07/26/pl...features-outl/ ...

Sony has revealed more information on PlayStation Vita's online modes Near, Party, LiveArea and Activity.

Near is like the Nintendo 3DS' SpotPass. It's "a location-based gifting system", according to Sony Europe manager of R&D, Phil Rogers.

"What Near does is it allows users to discover each other, leave gifts for each other and essentially find out more about games. You can see where people are in relation to your location, their five most recently played games and also gifts that they've registered. This is fairly cool because it exposes users to games they might not have heard of and you can see how popular those games are and how people are rating them," explained Rogers at the Develop Conference 2011.

Near's gifts don't settle in one place, "unlike another platform" - they follow you around as you "go about your daily life". Near allows one 100KB gift box per game. Boxes can contain multiple gifts but can't exceed the 100KB binary data size limit.

Rogers painted a verbal picture: "Imagine user A visits locations one to ten through that day, and they get home and sync with the server and it uploads to the Near server your ten locations that you've been to.

"User B comes along, does the same thing, but at some point in User B's day they passed User A's location five, which means they're now able to collect gifts that that user's dropped. That comes into the Near application and then in-game they pick up those gifts."

You can specify how many times a gift is picked up, how available it is from your daily locations in terms of relative distance, how long a gift lasts for, who can access the gift and the probability of finding it. A rare item might only be discovered by one in 100 people.

"You could have a rare ship and you could drop that and someone could collect that by using Near."
Phil Rogers, manager, Sony Europe R&D
Gifts can be more than simple items. "You can gift challenges," said Rogers, who used the example of a gift that challenges someone in WipEout, offering possible rewards if successful. You can even gift in-game items: "You could have a rare ship and you could drop that and someone could collect that by using Near," revealed Rogers.

Rogers said there will be functionality to write to a gift-giver and say thank you.

Party is "really good for having friends together to discuss games, chat about them and get into them", Rogers declared.

As on Xbox Live, Party is "platform-wide" and allows you and three friends to form a party that sticks together regardless of what you do on Vita. "You can chat across games through text and voice," explained Rogers.

"Cross-game voice chat," he reiterated, "it's there and it's on Vita."

You can also launch Vita games from within Party and your friends there can click a button and quickly join you.

"You can have different Party groups for different games or genres," expanded Rogers. "Maybe you've got a first-person shooter group that you can all chat and go into.

"The voice chat part you can override," he added, "so if in-game you've got your own teams for audio then you can override the Party chat and turn that off."

Party is integrated with friends lists but isn't compulsory for all games to include. "Games can choose not to," said Rogers.

LiveAarea and Activity: "The LiveArea is essentially where you go to launch your PlayStation Vita day," Rogers beamed.

There are three modes in LiveArea: Index, Live and Game. The top area you'll see is the content information zone, which is the "landing point for when you start any game on PS Vita". The communication zone is where you "comment on people's activities within the game as well as publish your messages".

"Activity is a way for players to discuss progress," explained Rogers. "The system automatically puts a few activities in there," he added, such as Trophies and ratings. "That encourages people to then comment similar to Facebook style."

"Publishers: it's important not to spam users too much and to use it sensibly."
Phil Rogers
LiveArea can be updated by developers and publishers. "When you ship the game it's got the standard LiveArea that you bake into the game card," said Rogers. But through updates "you can even customise it to the user" by pushing out different data.

Publishers can also "push data to users" by putting images on the LiveArea frontpage as well as announcements on the bottom part of the logo. "It's a good way to push DLC," said Rogers. "So there's new levels out, click, go to the Store." It's also a good way to push news about the game. But Rogers offered a word of warning to publishers that "it's important not to spam users too much and to use it sensibly".

LiveArea also has location features and allows pubs/devs to track Vita owners "either by GPS on the 3G model or triangulation of mobile phone cells".

"As well as that we work with Skyhook and they provide wireless access points around to keep a general idea of where you are," elaborated Rogers. ...

SCEE presents tech and tools groups supporting new handheld
Sony’s next generation handheld has at least 16 middleware and tools companies supporting the system, the platform holder has said.
Kish Hirani, head of developer services at SCEE Research and Development, took stage at the Develop Conference this week to present all the companies throwing their tech behind PS Vita.
According to Hirani, the middleware firms on board include:
AiLive
Audiokinetic
Autodesk (including Scaleform)
Blitz Games Studios
CRI
Epic Games
Gamespy Technology
NVIDIA
Premium Agency
RAD Game Tools
RakNet
SpeedTree
Terminal Reality
Umbra
Vicious Cycle
Web Technology
Hirani said the list was only of middleware firms ready to publicly announce their support – a suggestion that more are optimising their tech behind the scenes.
Elsewhere in the presentation, Hirani said PSP successor boasts four times higher resolution, and 600 times increased contrast, in comparison to PSP 3000.
The platform features an 4ARM Cortex A9 processor, Hirani said.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/3...ifbh+(Develop) ...

Sony's PS Vita, the new handheld that follows in the wake of the long-serving PSP, is the company's most developer-friendly console to date according to engineers from its research and development teams.

"We've never had tools at such an advanced state before the launch of a new platform," said Neil Brown, senior engineer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's R&D division said at today's Develop conference in Brighton.

"It's our most developer friendly console, and by quite some margin."

Both Brown and SCEE R&D's Kish Hirani offered a peek under the hood of the PS Vita, detailing the handheld's tech specs - which take in a Quad Core 4 Arm Cortex A9 CPU and a SGX543MP4 GPU - and combing through some of its AR abilities.

A subtitled version of a recently released video highlighting the PS Vita's facial recognition capabilities also revealed that the panther is hitting on the air stewardess but the air stewardess is married so hangs up.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...loper-friendly ...

LittleBigPlanet PS Vita developer Double Eleven has signed a PlayStation exclusive development deal with Sony.

Formed by former Rockstar Leeds lead engineers in 2010, the UK studio was recently revealed as the architect behind the technology driving LittleBigPlanet on Vita.

Under the terms of the deal, Double Eleven will work on LittleBigPlanet as well as new titles for Sony platforms.

SCE Worldwide Studios Europe senior vice president Michael Denny said: "Double Eleven are one of the most exciting developers to emerge onto the development scene in recent years, their technical expertise makes them a great fit for LittleBigPlanet on PS Vita and we've very pleased with the progress the team have made on this hugely anticipated title.

"For us to become strong partners with Sony at such a crucial stage in our own development underlines the unswerving commitment we have made to the quality of our production," said Double Eleven CEO Lee Hutchinson. "We look forward to a truly exciting new phase in our own development, with the absolute intention to become a world-class studio."

Siobhan Reddy, executive producer at LittleBigPlanet creator Media Molecule, said earlier this month that the studio's "stepping away" from the series "to focus on some new ideas".

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...ive-developer/ ...

Ken Levine, creative director of Irrational Games, has reaffirmed his commitment to core games, and explained why he thinks the PlayStation Vita and Nintendo are helping to invigorate the genre.

"It's a great year for the core coming back and saying, okay, have your touch screens, have your motion control, we'll try to make that work, and if you can pull that off it'll be really good," said Levine in an interview with IGN.

"But I want to have my cake and eat it too, I think these experiences are starting to allow that to happen," he said of the Wii U's two stick controller design.

"I've always had to sacrifice that core gaming experience when I lie in bed playing games," he explained.

"We're now getting to a place with Vita and what Nintendo's doing where that's not necessarily going to be the case, where you can play full-on hardcore games in bed with the lights out while your wife's asleep. That means a lot to me."

He also spoke about the recently announced Bioshock project for PlayStation Vita handheld, and said he had no interest in making it a more casual style of game.

"That's not the kind of game I'm going to make. It is a core game," said Levine.

"I'm not a huge Fruit Ninja guy, it just doesn't interest me. I respect what those guys do, and obviously they're able to tap into a kind of zeitgeist that is outside what I do, but it's just not me. I'm a core gamer. If you're looking at me to make a game like that, you're probably hiring the wrong dude."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...re-coming-back ...