14 DAY TRIAL // The PlayStation Vita handheld from Sony is still set to arrive during the holiday season and the developer of the device has offered some more information on the online modes that the platform was set to deliver: Party, LiveArea, Activity and Near.
Party is a way of creating a group of friends, all owners of Vita, who will stick together and play together across multiple sessions.
Phil Rogers, who is one of the technical directors working on the Sony handheld, has said Party is “really good for having friends together to discuss games, chat about them and get into them.”
The feature also allows for cross game voice chat and that games can be launched from inside Party.
LiveArea is main activity hub for the PlayStation Vita and will allow players to see the kind of activities that they can do on the device and will allow developers and publishers to suggest things that gamers can do in the games, pushing information on Trophies or on DLC.
LiveArea will also allow developers to track the location of the Vita via GPS or via cell phone tower triangulation, as long as the users enable the features.
Rogers says, “Activity is a way for players to discuss progress. The system automatically puts a few activities in there. That encourages people to then comment similar to Facebook style.”
Near seems to be similar to the SpotPass concept of the Nintendo 3DS, with Phil Rogers saying that, “What Near does is it allows users to discover each other, leave gifts for each other and essentially find out more about games.”
The gifts offered through Near will be stored in a 100 kb box and will follow the player around as he moves his device with him.
Those who use the Vita will be able to customize all these services, deciding for themselves how social they plan on being and how much they want to interact with others mobile gamers.