PS Vita update 1.80

The PS Vita system update 1.80 gave us a few notable tweaks-- we can now use the hardware controls to navigate the menus! Just go into SETTINGS>SYSTEM>and check Control with Buttons on PS Vita System. Both the left analogue stick & D-pad can be used to move around icons and X button selects things. Long pressing the O button even does the peel away effect for closing things, but the PS button is still used to get to that screen in apps.

Also of note is 1.80 allows support of PS One games. I haven't tried it yet myself, I have one PS one game and it isn't available on Vita yet.... waitasec-- I just checked my Downloads list on PSN, and it seems I *can* download my lone PS One game, Nuclear Strike.... so I will try that out & report back later!

For me, the one of the big things of 1.80 is that it seems to fix the video pause sleep feature that was missing since the Vita launched. Specifically, if you paused a video, the Vita never goes into sleep mode. it would leave the screen on forever-- or presumably until the battery died. (But what it if was plugged in?)  That's really bad... but now, it does seem to go into sleep mode, the screen turns off after 5 minutes? A welcome fix, for sure.

The big issue that is NOT advertised is that update 1.80 locks memory cards to a single PSN account. Some people have multiple accounts to access other region games, and this makes it harder to do. [Wired article]

And I'm sure that there are a bunch of piracy and homebrew blocks embedded in 1.80 as well.

Full list of features & info: http://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/08/14/psone-classics-coming-to-ps-vita-via-the-latest-system-software-update-v1-80/


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