Even though Sony have made the rather strange decision to market the PlayStation TV in the west as being a companion device for the PlayStation 4 first and a PlayStation Vita second, one thing that everyone wants to know is just what will actually run on the micro-console.
We are trying to provide a comprehensive list here on Vita Player of PlayStation TV Compatible Games and Sony themselves have produced an official list although Sony’s list makes no mention of PSM titles. While we are integrating these into our list, compatibility of these seems to be far more confusing than that of other PS Vita titles…
First, in terms of the games themselves PSM titles fall into two categories. The earlier games were written using the original SDK and were compatible with Android devices as well as the Vita and as such often used touch controls or on-screen button / joysticks. When the new Unity-based SDK was released, Android support was dropped. This allowed developers to utilise the Vita’s power more and in turn more games have become dependent solely on physical controls.
The key thing to remember with PSM releases is that many of them are casual games and were designed with touch controls in mind. This was never because physical controls weren’t available for developers but simply because many games were better suited to touch control than anything else. That doesn’t help PlayStation TV owners looking to play these games but at the time it made sense. Certainly, games like Crystal Ice are far more responsive when played with this style of input.
It’s perfectly understandable that these are not compatible with the PlayStation TV although I do wonder why some effort hasn’t been made to check these properly to see if some gameplay compromise could be made by the player. If the match-three game Treasures Of Montezuma Arena can be allowed despite being 100% dependent on touch controls then why can’t a PSM classic like Console Saga? It does seem as if many games are being placed on an approved list by Sony Computer Entertainment and when loading for the first time the PlayStation TV checks these titles to see if Sony has approved them for use. If so then, as gamers, we are permitted to play them but if not them these games are blocked for no apparent reason.
A the time of writing this, there are over 350 titles available for PlayStation Mobile in the EU, yet only 98 of these are listed in the PlayStation TV version of the PSN Store. It’s a strange mix of releases listed as well with some games dating back to the early days of PSM, some recent titles and a mix of game genres but there are games included that make use of touch controls for navigating menus here when similar titles have been excluded – it’s all rather bizarre. Surely someone with some basic knowledge of the games being checked could make an informed decision of what will or won’t be allowed and enable gamers to have a wider choice of games on the PSTV?
To make matters more confusing, as we are all aware, the PlayStation TV not only has its own integrated 1Gb of internal storage but it is also able to utilise existing memory cards that you may already be using with your current PS Vita set-up. For any other games you have this makes life considerably easier avoiding the need to have separate memory cards and save data for each console and simply swapping cards as you see fit. That is until you come onto PlayStation Mobile…
Despite downloads from the PSN Store granting gamers the license to download and use titles on up to three compatible devices, for some reason the PlayStation TV has a great deal of difficulty in accepting existing games that you may have already downloaded from the PSN Store when it comes to PlayStation Mobile. Every other game format seems to work fine – PS Vita, PSP, PS One and Minis – it’s just PSM that causes problems. I found that the majority of titles that I tested that were compatible needed to be re-installed before they worked. That being the case, the best course of action when it comes to running PlayStation Mobile on the PlayStation TV, especially considering the limited compatibility right now, is to assign a dedicated memory card to the format for the micro-console and just re-download games as you want them, leaving your existing PSM collection as it is.
Sadly this isn’t an ideal way of working right now and I hope that it is something that is addressed sooner rather than later as I fear that PSM afficionados won’t be too appreciative of having to download entire games collections a second time…
The thing with PSM Titles is . About 6 months after vita tv was released, Sony contacted developers if we wanted our games on the vita tv. And asking if any technical problems would prevent them from working properly. If you replied back to the email with the name of your game , it would be listed as a vita tv comparable game.
Later when the pstv was announced for the west, the 1.xx sdk was updated with a checkbox . If checked your game would be pstv listed.
The problem with this was, as a developer I want to test my games on the pstv without blindingly saying “yes ,put it on the system” .
The check box has been available for at least since January of this year.
Yet there was no way for us in the west to try out our games on the pstv till a few weeks ago.
Now in order to update every game in a developers library. We have 3 different sdk’s (1.xx,2.0, unity) to go through and they can’t all be on the same system at the same time.
I was planning on doing this over the weekend. Install sdk 1.xx tick the box , uninstall 1.xx , install 2.0, tick the box .uninstall, and reinstall unity.
Such a chore.
I’m astonished that the decision on availability is down to little more than a tick box with no real checking for suitability. I do wonder whether the same approach has been taken for Vita games and if so, are some publishers being over-cautious.
I am concerned yet again over the lack of interest regarding PSM. Why did it take Sony so long to consider adding PSM support to the PSTV in the first place? It seems as if PlayStation Mobile is always an afterthought.