Hello everyone it's SpawnPoiint and it has been 10 years since the PS Vita launched. And in that
time we have seen two models released, we had the original OLED, and then the later slim version.
We also had a selection of AAA games, loads of retro games and of course the rise of the modding
community. We've also seen Sony drop all support for it almost disabling the PS store entirely back
in 2021. But with all of that said, is it still worth buying or playing a PS Vita in 2022? I still
feel the PS Vita is one of the most underrated consoles out there. Now let me know if you've had,
still have, or i've always wanted a Playstation Vita? I'm always interested in hearing what your
thoughts are. Okay, so first up considering this is a 10 year old design it still looks pretty good
i've got the original OLED black version here but the glossy front panel along with the silver logos
and branding look nice even the tiny little ps icons on the rear panel are awesome then
around the front we've got a 5-inch touchscreen oled display which was way ahead of its time in
the later model they actually removed the oled and swapped it for an lcd screen instead and
considering how nice this screen looks it's not even 720p it's actually just 960x544 and as for
the controls well the vita does almost everything that we need in fact you could say it did too much
on the front we have the two analog sticks the d-pad the triangle circle cross and square as well
as the home select and start buttons on the top we have the L and R buttons or the shoulder triggers
and a few others like the volume and the power buttons now for its time the l and r buttons
were absolutely fine but i think today we would probably want either triggers or the addition of
L2 and R2 buttons now this rear panel on the back isn't just a cool design it's actually a touch
panel a bit like the touch bar that we have on the playstation 4 and the playstation 5 controllers
for me i've never been a fan of this i know some games incorporate it quite well but most of the
time you end up tapping it by mistake while trying to hold it which is another thing now this is very
easy to hold but i find that over long periods of time it still gets a little bit uncomfortable
i think that's a combination of the analog stick placement being quite low and the fact that it's
a pretty small device day to day this is fine but adding a grip definitely helps for those
long periods it makes it feel a little bit more natural now if only satisfied did grips for the
vita like they did for the switch this would be an awesome addition and when it comes to the games
well this is where you'll either love or hate this console for me it's the perfect retro nostalgic
and arcade game machine out of the box there are still hundreds of ps vita games to download or buy
even in 2022 and that goes for both digital and physical games so games like Uncharted, Gravity
rush, Persona, Kill Zone and even little big planet. But it's not just the vita games there's a
library of psp, and playstation 1 games available through the store honestly there are some real
gems on here that are still worth playing today only last week i actually downloaded the original
driver game for two pounds from the store i remember playing this back on the playstation
one when i was a child and it's also being able to play these again on the vita now although the
library of games on the vita store or second hand market is great what you see now really is what
you'll get with the lack of support from sony in the early years it meant that the big developers
just didn't get on board with new titles so although the vita did exist over a long period of
time other than the original launch games as well as jrpgs not a great deal of new games launched
that were worth playing later on saying that i'm always open to suggestions for new games to play
so drop any of your recommendations below that we should be playing but one of the main reasons
i actually bought a vita about five years ago now was for trophy hunting on the go now not everyone
wants to get trophies or platinum again but it's something that i've done for a while and being
able to do on the vita is great of course the store is filled with cheap and cheerful games if
you want to plat them a game in an hour or two but there are also some incredible games online that
are built just for the vita so other than playing an existing library of psp vita and playstation 1
games and trophy hunting what else does the vita do that's worth buying one in 2022 well there is a
huge community behind modding or hacking the vita this really does unlock the console's
true potential and shows just how powerful this awesome console is and once it's modded you can
play pretty much any retro game that you can think of that includes the playstation 1, NES, SNES,
GameBoy and PSP now there are already loads of psp and ps1 games on the store but fortunately not all
games are officially supported this way you can download a huge library of games unofficially of
course to play on the vita you can also unlock the ability to use normal sd cards with an sd
card adapter this means you don't need to use these sony sd cards which are both hard to get
hold of and really expensive now believe it or not i've not actually modded mine and the only reason
for this is i don't want to risk my psn account being banned and that's of course because i use
this feature to get trophies on the go i'm sure there are workarounds and low risk options but
for now i'm still playing the official games and i'm happy to leave the modded route for another
day but if you've modded your ps feature what have you used and what are the benefits to you
a few other features that the vita supports is remote play and that allows you to play your
games from your playstation 3 or your playstation 4 straight to the vita a bit like how the remote
play app works on the iphone for the playstation 5. and over the years loads of apps have been
removed or discontinued from the vita store that includes things like youtube facebook and a few
others but there are still a few that work today and those that don't can usually be accessed from
the browser instead as for the overall ui and the store on the vita i think it looks fine it's clean
minimal and even today it has that playstation feel to it you can definitely tell it was designed
around the same time as the playstation 3. you can even go ahead and add themes to it which is
why i'm using the 20th anniversary theme from the store and if you wanted to you could add your own
wallpaper or background as well but as sony drop support for the vita i'm not sure how long we will
get updates i can see the latest version is 3.74 released in may 2022 and as for mobile gaming i
think the vita can easily stand its own against mobile phones i mean sure you could pick up an
iphone or an android device and emulate the games on there maybe even with better graphics but you'd
really need a third-party attachment to replicate the physical controls but today with things like
the switch and the steam deck it just shows how much we like buttons over touch screen only mobile
gaming and with the recently released backbone one controller for playstation this reaffirms
that mobile gaming is still popular today and the fact that playstation have opted to make this
accessory official could it be a sign that they are once again taking mobile gaming seriously i
did actually order one of these a few weeks back but unfortunately it's still shown as a waiting
shipping as soon as i get my hands on one of these i will be doing a review on the channel as i think
for the money this is a really good accessory of course the vita isn't the only handheld console
on the market right now we've got the switch and of course the new steam deck both of these offer a
whole different experience and a different library of games and they are incredibly popular and have
shown that mobile gaming is here to stay but with that said why did the vita fail some say it was
ahead of its time and it just brought too many features to a handheld console that no one really
wanted at the time with these extra features it added to the overall cost of the hardware and it
meant that consumers just couldn't justify the cost it didn't help that the memory cards were
so expensive and if sony locked us in with their own rather than allowing normal third-party sd
cards it added hundreds of pounds to an already expensive console and finally sony just didn't
support it as much as it deserved the backwards compatibility was limited and although ps1 and
psp games were added there was no support for ps2 with a lack of support meant that aaa games
were limited too and that shows in the lineup that we've seen today developers couldn't get on board
with a console that sony simply just did not care about but what if you want to buy one of these
today well sony officially ended production of the ps vita back in 2019 which considering it launched
between late 2011 and early 2012 that wasn't a bad run but what that means is buying one today
is a little more difficult the obvious place to start is somewhere like ebay gumtree or facebook
for a secondhand unit and then you need to decide if you want the original oled model or the later
slim version i think the slim version is actually nicer looking overall and it's a lot more modern
but i still prefer the screen on the original and that's why i chose that one price wise looking
online today you're looking to pay around 100 pounds or 150 dollars which isn't a bad price
so the ultimate question is should you buy or own a ps vita in 2022 i think the short answer
is yes you should but it really depends on if you see value in playing a playstation or emulated
retro games on the go i think the new backbone attachment could be a real sign that playstation
are showing some interest again in mobile gaming but does that mean that we will see a ps vita 2
in the future i'm not so sure but if you want to play ps games on a classic machine with the option
to mod it to play even more this is hard to pass on well if you drop a ps vita 2022 in the comments
i will give you a thumbs up for staying right to the end and if you did enjoy today's video check
out my ps5 update video next as that covers the new 1440p and other updates that we're getting
on the ps5 thanks for watching please like sub and follow me on instagram and twitter until next time