That would require owning two systems and not trading in one for a discount on the other. Is it worth it?

Well, personally I never trade in my own consoles.

Yeah what turtle said. I never get rid of any of my consoles. If you do, you shouldn't expect to play the games on any thing else than the console they were made for.

Unless it's a Nintendo console

No Nintendo consoles were b/c until the DS, and then the Wii. But Ninty likes to go and take out the b/c feature, as they did with both of those consoles in the redesigns.

Actually sorry, the GBC could play GB games, and the GBA could play GB/C games... But still, they took that b/c out too with the micro u__u

@zez, whoever's arguing atm: yes, the redesigns do generally remove backwards compatibility, but whether people bought it for the existing library of DS games or not, the 3DS is backwards compatible (at this time) and they were able to tout that ability at launch — hey, if you don't have a DS yet, just grab yourself a 3DS and you can pick up all these amazing games, and if you do already have a DS, you're in luck! just trade in your old system and keep your games, you can totes still play 'em! y'know, that kind of thing. probably made upselling that much easier in stores; i know i heard the guys in gamestop talking about it to people whenever i went in for other stuff pre-3DS-launch.

The Vita won't be able to say that, so (at first) it's gonna have the same problem the Go had — most of its available games will be download-only, and the average person isn't quite ready to go full-on download-only just yet. Yes, eventually it will have its system-sellers, but for now, without sellers being able to say that it's fully compatible with these shelves worth of UMD games over here — and of course the handful released at launch that maybe people want and maybe they don't — i can't see initial sales being anything but sluggish in terms of John Q. Averageguy.

Fun facts: The DS and DS Lite were b/c with GBA games and the latter was still on shelves last year. The Wii was the first Nintendo home console in the west to feature b/c, but the b/c was removed 5 years later. The PS3 had b/c with PS2 until about a year later. The Vita has no b/c.

In other news I'm totally not going to buy one of those newfangled CD players because they're not backwards compatible with vinyl <_<

What about cassette players?

Pfft. Cassettes are for losers.

Agreed, man. Cassettes are so overrated. We use 8-tracks!

Wow. I barely remember 8-tracks. Talk about ancient.

iOS devices and Android say hi.

I like how we started talking about Vita and now we're also talking about cassettes and 8 tracks. Pretty much my sentiments exactly. May as well go full circle...

You guys don't know hardcore until you listen to heavy metal through a gramophone.

I really do need to get around to buying a record player one of these days.

Oh yeah and cassettes suck. Sound quality blows compared to everything else.

the difference you've apparently missed (so what else is new) is that people have those devices as phones first, gaming devices second. you need a phone. you don't need a Vita.

Yeah I don't think anyone goes in to an Apple store and walks out with an iPhone or iPad for the express purpose of playing games.

They play games well, don't get me wrong. They just do a few thousand other things first, and those thousand other things are the purchasing drivers for the customers.

Primary use of iPhone and Android devices is for calling, texting, browsing and other smart phone utilities. Then people go on to the gaming part just as a plus; bottom line, it's a phone, not a gaming device. Download-only is acceptable for it, as games are not its primary function.

If you really feel the need to compare something download-only in the primary gaming world, do consider the PSP Go. ...Oh, wait. That was a failure.

Do put more thought in your posts, PlagiariserTendoboy. _{Oh hell yes, I did.}

He was exaggerating to prove a point....