Playstation TV - The Good and The BaD

On 02/04/2015 at 05:47 PM by mothman

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Happy 3rd (official) day of BaD Pixlbitallion.

Playstation TV

As many of you know I picked this up before Christmas for 2 reasons.

One is that I really needed a new PS3 controller. My two launch controllers (Before Rumble) are in various stages of brokenness. One is sort of usable but the other is pooched. The second reason is that I wanted to play Persona 4 Golden but can't afford the 200 dollar admission price for the handheld.

So as luck would have it the price of this bundle dropped to $99.99. The 8 GB card is small but does the job and I have yet to try the Lego Movie game.

So First The Good

I can now play Persona 4 Golden!

There are a whole bunch of Vita RPGs that are compatible

I can now play some of the Vita games I got through PSN+ (But only some)

I can play my digital PSP games on my TV now and they work well.

I can play my digital PS1 library on it without having to fire up the noisy PS3. This also means I'm extending the lifespan of my PS3 because I'm not overheating it just to play PS1 games

It is whisper quiet and so small it can be easily placed out of sight

Copying games and data from or too my PS3 is easy!

Now The Bad

There are many Vita games that are not compatible. It's not too bad for me though. The only one that really pisses me off is Ys: Memories of Celceta which for some reason doesn't work on it.

This is not first hand but I understand that streaming PS4 games doesn't work very well but then why did anyone expect it to?

Update: I forgot one biggie. Storage. The proprietary memory cards which are the only means of storing your digital games are still overpriced. A 32 GB microSD card can be bought for less than 20 bucks these days but Sony's 32 GB card cost 80 bucks!?!? They also made the cards so tiny that no one can create a shell that accepts microSD cards like they did for the Pro Duo. Also how was it they were able to put 16 GB of internal Storage in the ill fated PSP Go but chose to give us just 1 GB in the Vita and Vita TV. To add insult to injury that 1 GB vanishes the minute you put in a memory card

I'm not sure why but putting it on Standby instead of turning it off messes it up sometimes but not always. When it does it sometimes refuses to use the network connection, allow access to the store, and all manner of weird error messages come up. Turning it off completely and restarting always solves the problem though.

Sometimes when you are in the store or doing something network related it will claim to have lost the connection then on retrying it connects again. It never seems to affect downloads though.

In Summary

For my applications this is a great little device and the bundle with all the extras is a frikkin' steal. If nothing else ever comes out for it there's still a large library of games to play on it. Especially if you never bought a PSP and love RPGs.

Until tomorrow kids, it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from him.

waving panda

Matt Snee Staff Writer

02/04/2015 at 05:57 PM

well, it's almost worth it just for the PSX and Persona games. I imagine it plays P3P too? probably. well, there is a huge PSP catalog, even though it's not all online (Crisis Core, where are you?!?)

mothman

02/04/2015 at 06:15 PM

Yes it plays P3P.

Ranger1

I am intrigued. Can't afford it right now, but I'm still intrigued.

02/04/2015 at 06:29 PM

it's been dropping in price a lot, I think to about 65 bucks in some sales, I'm not sure. It's a pretty good deal.

02/04/2015 at 06:46 PM

Considering you are getting a $40 controller, a $20 dollar memory card, a $20 game and an hdmi cable you wind up paying less than 20 bucks for the unit itself even at the $100 price point.

02/04/2015 at 06:48 PM

Yeah, but financially, I can't swing that. I've been out of work since the end of September.

02/04/2015 at 06:49 PM

It will probably be even cheaper when you can afford it.

Super Step Contributing Writer

02/04/2015 at 08:58 PM

I should probably admit to myself I mostly play handheld games at home anyway.

Aboboisdaman

02/05/2015 at 03:35 PM

Besides the overpriced SD cards this sounds like a cool little device. I'd love to be able to play PSP games on my TV. My PS3 is retired though and I'm not going back.

02/05/2015 at 05:57 PM

It is Aaron. I'm actually playing Suikoden II on it right now but I've checked a couple of PSP games on it.

KnightDriver

02/06/2015 at 02:41 AM

Darn it! I wish Silent Hill: Book of Memories was compatible with PSTV. I found some of the text in the game maddenly small and hard to read. Maybe then it would be more fun so I can play it with daftman again.

PixlBit