Competitive gaming: PlayStation Vita vs. Nintendo 3DS

The challenge

PlayStation Vita, also called PS Vita is Sony’s forthcoming handheld game console. The successor to the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) is to arrive in stores in Japan and Asia by December this year and in Europe and U.S. by February next year. Nintendo, Sony’s leading rival in game console industry, already has a contender 3DS to PlayStation Vita. Nintendo, also a Japan based entertainment firm, introduced its auto-stereoscopic portable gaming machine early this year in global markets. Though initially touted as a game changing device, Nintendo 3DS could not draw enough attention. It is then Sony has emerged up with a tremendously competitive PS Vita. Here is a detailed comparison of the features and capabilities of these two handheld gaming consoles. Get through the article to have better insights into the features of PS Vita and 3DS.

PlayStation Vita vs. Nintendo 3DS

Comparison attributes

Display

PS Vita is to advance with a 5-inch OLED multitouch capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 960x544 pixels. The large display provides ample freedom for gamers to play the modern day titles. Nintendo’s 3DS, meanwhile, has a 3.53-inch top screen (400x240px) and 3.05-inch bottom resistive screen (320x240px).

Winner: Sony PlayStation Vita. The Sony game console has high quality and large display.

Processor and graphics card

3DS is equipped with Nintendo ARM CPU and Digital Media Professionals’ PICA200 GPU. Sony Vita, at the same time, is to run on a highly powerful 4 core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore and 4 core SGX543MP4+ GPU.

Winner: Sony PlayStation Vita. The Sony game console certainly has best CPU and GPU for blistering performance.

Game controllers

State-of-the-art game controllers make a game device a perfect one. If you have all buttons and controllers in comfortable spots, a game console, especially a portable one, will be looking great. In this aspect, Sony PlayStation Vita is a champion over its Nintendo contender. PSL features dual analog thump sticks, triangle, circles, square, X, L & R shoulder and d-pad, which help a gamer play most of titles effortlessly. On contrast, Nintendo 3DS has a one thump pad controlling, A,B,X,Y & R shoulder and d-pad.

Winner: Sony PlayStation Vita

On-device memory

3DS sports 246MB internal memory. The gadget also supports a 2GB SD card. Storage capacity of PlayStation Vita is not available at the moment. Whatever, the Sony game console features a 512MB RAM and 128MB VRAM. Most possibly, there will be better internal storage option for PSV.

Winner: Sony PlayStation Vita. The Sony handheld device has a superior RAM and VRAM. So that, it is certain there will be large memory option on the device than its rival.

Connectivity

To have Internet connectivity means you can download games and apps on the portable game consoles. In this area also, PS Vita outshines Nintendo 3Ds with Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth 2.1 options. 3DS only has Wi-Fi option for network connectivity. Anyway, it is not clear until today that how Vita will get 3G connectivity. Will a game device be sold by a cellular service provider?

Winner: Sony PlayStation Vita.

Media

Sony has introduced a brand new NVG cards for Vita. So rather than sticking to the PSP’s UMDs, you can depend on NVG cards that are available in 2 and 4GB versions. The PS Vita is also backwards compatible with the games of the device’s predecessor. But on Nintendo 3DS, apart from 2GB internal storage, you have SD card slot to expand the memory. The console is also backwards compatible with the DS games.

Winner: Nintendo 3DS. It has SD for memory expansion.

Price

On release, Nintendo had a price around $250. But after several price cuts following the shrinking market for the game console, you can now get the device for a price below $200. Sony has not revealed anything on the pricing of PS Vita. As per rumors, the feature-rich game console will have a price just below $300.

Winner: Nintendo 3DS. Price was cut down due to bad response in market.

The verdict

Video gaming is becoming more popular across the world. From computers and large video game consoles, we now have small and portable handheld devices for gaming. Nintendo 3D and Sony PS Vita are two early comers into the celebrated portable gaming industry. But the response of the customers to 3DS was quite bad, indeed. There is an explanation that it is because people do not admire a 3D display that only shows the content if you look at the screen from a straight angle. Whatever, Sony PS Vita may get more attention as it is with more features.