Leviathyn The Gamer's Chronicle
You already knew about Cross Play, a feature that lets you play select titles, such as Sound Shapes and the upcoming PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, on both your Ps3 and your Vita. Since you still had to buy both titles, however, it seemed more like a money grab than an exciting feature. With Sony unveiling their new Cross Buy initiative at Gamescom though, the company is doing something that could generate something much more valuable than profits right now: goodwill.
Sony could use it right now. With hacker group Anonymous raising noise about a new breach in the PlayStation Network (although at the time of this writing the claims appear to be false) it’s hard not to remember the bad taste of the last PSN problem. A solid, but not spectacular, E3 showing proved that Sony is still at the top of their game, but this might be their best announcement of the year.
Cross Buy allows you to purchase a handful of games once (Battle Royale, Sound Shapes, Ratchet and Clank: Full Frontal Assault, and Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time ), and play them on both your Vita and PS3, while retaining the same game save data through both systems. I was skeptical of the Vita at first,but the impressice specs of the system make this more than just a bullet point; I’m genuinely excited about carrying around the new Sly Cooper game in its entirety. If this program blossoms and helps move titles for Sony (which it should), the sky could be the limit, and I could see the Vita really taking off as a result of this.
Or, like so many truly good innovations in the video game world, it could become an afterthought in the struggling handheld market. Either way, I applaud Sony for making a move that appears to put the wants of gamers high on the priority list.
