EVE General Discussion

So first, lets' talk about the prospect of having the ability to interact with Eve Online or even Dust 514 while being offline. For example, say you're out to dinner and you get a text message saying you've finished a skill, you log into your Eve Online Mobile application via your iPhone or Android start up a new skill and go back to enjoying dinner. Sounds great doesn't it? Yeah actually it kinda does...

Now let's take a look at the PS Vita, or the first "mobile" application that CCP plans to put anything on..

Launch Date:

JPN December 17, 2011[1]
NA February 15, 2012 (first edition bundle only)[2]
NA February 22, 2012[3]
EU February 22, 2012[4]
RU February 22, 2012[4]
AU February 23, 2012[5]
CAN October 2, 2012 (3G version)[6]

Units Sold:
2.2 million (as of June 30, 2012) ( http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/20/vita-sales-august-2012/ )

That's a decent amount of units sold, sure...but is it really?

Let's take a look at the Samsung Galaxy S3 shall we?

Launch Date:
29 May 2012 - available in 145 countries as of June 2012 just one month after it's release.

Units Sold since release:
9 million orders before release; 50 million total (as of 14 March 2013) ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324077704578358283252725470.html ) ( "But we aim to grow faster than the overall smartphone market this year and expect shipments to be higher than 400 million units this year. We've already sold 50 million units of the Galaxy S III since its launch last year." ) Holy hell that's a lot of smart phones... and that's just android.

Let's look at price points shall we?

Vita: 249.96USD From Wallmart
GalaxyS3: 149.99USD Straight from Sprint

Hrm.... Starting to see something of a point here? The only viable reason CCP would choose Vita over the normal smartphone market, (which they stand to make a massive amount of money in if they choose to charge for applications, even 2.99USD or some such number) is because they are partnered with Sony. (Yes, I'm captain obvious, but I had to point it out.)
So I need to ask CCP directly for a change..

What are you thinking? No one wants a vita, it's got a very very small customer base, a higher price point, oh and specs..let's look at specs and use the GalaxyS4 shall we?

Vita: CPU up to 2 GHz[9][10][11][note 1] Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore
Storage capacity PS Vita memory card (4, 8, 16 or 32 GB)
Memory 512 MB RAM, 128 MB VRAM

GalaxyS3:
CPU

1.6 GHz quad-core Cortex-A15 and 1.2 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 (GT-I9500 version)
1.9 GHz quad-core Krait 300 (GT-I9505 version)
GPU

IT tri-core PowerVR SGX 544 GPU (GT-I9500 version)
Adreno 320 (GT-I9505 version)
Memory 2 GB LPDDR3 RAM
Storage 16, 32 or 64 GB

Wow...a 1.9ghz quad in the phone vs a 2ghz quad in the vita and the vita is a 100 bucks more expensive? Then look at storage and memory and I ask you, is anyone actually leaning back in the chair and going, "Wow, what a bad marketing decision they just made..." Because I am.

Here's hoping this invites intelligent non-flame war orientated conversation, though I've been playing for 7 years and know how these forums operate so my hopes are a little low, but humor me yeah? :)

-DR

Or maybe because most of the stuff currently being offered is for dust and is ps3 technology and weirdly that is what the vita is build around. Its all crest stuff and that is somewhat designed to work with sony products already. You seem to have missed the part where ccp Unifex is basically now creating the mobile part of ccp and if you mail your ideas and wants to his twitter as he asked people to do during fanfest he is their to listen to them.

But yes Vita is coming first due to the fact its already bundled into dust. Think of the vita as just a ps3 extention for dust and the mobile stuff is still to come. Its annoying because I may have to actually join this century and buy a smart phone if they do this.

(edit) Looks like someone beat me to it on the posting

One thing to note. That S3 from sprint? That'll be on contract, so subsidised. You're going to have to keep paying for it, month on month. If you take the price for an off contract one, the prices are /far/ more similar.

^ This.

DUST 514 already heavily uses the CREST API where EVE Online does not. Thus it is far easier to get a mobile application working using CREST.

Tasks such as skill queue and mail that might seem easy to someone who hasn't worked with the source code of the game are likely to be mired in legacy code. As such the work of simply exposing a CREST API for changing character skills is likely to be hampered by all the code in the game that is triggered when a skill is queued, completed, or removed from the queue.

If you don't trust the developers to give you a fair assessment of the work required to expose a CREST API for a specific portion of the game, the developers will simply stop communicating with you at all.

I would also suggest that EVE Online players need to eat some humble pie, given that DUST has a higher active user count. When it comes to the next PCU record-breaking attempt, don't be surprised when CCP tells us that it will include DUST 514 mercenaries currently logged in, and especially don't be surprised when the PCU consists of about 40% EVE Online characters and 60% DUST 514 characters. I'm expecting a PCU of around 150k on Tranquility when the record attempt is made.

I have a Vita and have been looking for an excuse to use it. Oh wait...

Really though, I am sure they will release it for iPhone/Android later. CCP has an agreement with Sony and both need to make money off this first. Releasing applications on the Vita to support the games use on the PS3 is only logical.

Comparing a phone to a mobile console, which is not a phone ........................................

edit: I agree, though, there should be an android port.
None for iOS, though, because they don't deserve it. :p

Prior to last years Fanfest, I hadn't even heard of a Vita, as of this Years Fanfest, I still haven't seen one in person. None of my friends own them, even the ones that own PS3s and even the ones that are complete Sony Fanboys(you know the ones that have a PS1, PS2, PS3 and a number of other Sony products).

If you want to make a mobile app for either game you are more likely to get interaction with it on a phone, and the most common Phone OSs are Android and iOS, so if you developed for both of them, you would cover a huge chunk of the market.

why so bitter OP, it was stated at fanfest last year that the VITA will get a Dust companion app.

It's the best handheld gaming device around atm, it would be nice to get something other than Persona and Monster Hunter to do on it, even if it's just flicking skills and watching numbers grow.

All the backend work that's being done for this is /completely/ client agnostic. You'll be able to (if/when CCP decide to open the CREST end points to third party developers) write your own apps, using that work.

And CCP will be able to reuse all the backend stuff on an apple or android device. Or a web front end.

CCP Merovingian (Probably spelt wrong.) appears to want to put EVE on pretty much everything from a toaster on up. He's the guy that's working on the Vita app.


There will, likely, be end points which aren't made available to third party devs though. Which is a good thing. I can trust CCP not to write an app which will completley automate market activity. So they can have that end point. A third party dev, not so much. If it /can/ be automated, /someone/ will do it.

There are two kinds of EVE players:

1. Those who b***h about Dustbunnies.

2. Those who support and defend Dustbunnies.


This reminds me of when I was in the Army, and I had to hear POGs (Personnel Other than Grunts) hating on Infantrymen and Forward Observers. I was one of those Forward Observers, and nothing made me angrier than some paper-pusher trying to tell me he was automatically better and smarter than me and my 11B buddies, because he chose a boring support MOS. Bollocks.
Except for hearing Infantry guys say that anyone who isn't Infantry isn't a "real" Soldier.

In this scenario, it seems the Dustbunnies (who, for all intents and purposes, are 11B's) are pretty chill about things, and us Eggbabies tend to get all worked up about dumb crap. Dude.... we fly around in internet spaceships.... and they pound internet ground on fake planets. We have one thing in common.... we like to shoot stuff. Hell, CCP even gave us a way to participate, together, in our favorite spacefaring activity, with the Orbital Bombardments.

As long as the Dustbunnies stay chillaxed, this space-POG is more than willing to shell the ever-loving crap-snot out of your enemies when you get in over your heads. Just bear with my IRL-like Artillery chatter, on the other end of the Vent server, and throw me a bone by saying cool stuff like "Danger Close" and "Fire For Effect", okay?