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Possible new PlayStation Portal model pays homage to the Vita's OLED

While much of the focus on PlayStation's next steps is the PS6 and PS6 Portable , the two-year old PlayStation Portal could be getting a revamp according to those pesky internet rumours.  Update : Hints at pricing are around £/$250-299 for the new model, but everything remains deeply in rumours territory. Presumably the goal is to hit the 10% (currently 7%-ish) adoption rate among PS5 owners, something that would make it a bone fide hit gadget.   There's a PlayStation State of Play coming up on 12th February that might act as an announcement point. Certainly, PlayStation needs to make Portal more a core member of the PS5 family, rather than a distant cousin that most of its appearances suggest.  As the improvement in connectivity and streaming tech, proven by many gamers enjoying their PS5 or PlayStation Plus streamed content from around the world, an updated Portal Pro could be on the cards.  Possibly featuring a 120Hz display and an OLED screen in honour of ...

FIFA 14 tops the Vita chart, but FIFA Football reenters to prove we're not all mugs

Despite the warnings, FIFA 14 is the new UK No. 1 dislodging GTA V from the all-formats and Killzone from the Vita (and PSP) chart. Are people really buying it for £44.99 on PSN? On the plus side, both FIFA 13 and the original FIFA football are still in the top 10, suggesting that more gamers are cottoning on to EA's shoddy practice.

Apparently overall sales of FIFA 14 are down almost a quarter on last year, which is a positive sign, wonder if PES is picking up the slack? I'll update when the Guardian charts adds the sales breakdown so we can see how many Vita muppets there were out of the pack.

Why is FIFA 14 even on Vita? 

Is a good question to ask. The answer simply is through the year, FIFA 13 on the Vita has been responsible for between 7% to 15% of all copies sold in the UK, regularly the third-placed format. That's not a huge number, but week over week adds up to a decent chunk of change (given the edging down price cuts over a year). 

Given the zero effort and cost of rebadging, it can earn that all over again, and presumably EA will only do a proper refresh when it sees those sales dropping off, or will just kill the effort as happened with Madden. Will EA surprise us in 2014? Yes, I think but not in a good way. 

1 new FIFA 14 EA SPORTS - 1
2 KILLZONE: MERCENARY SONY COMPUTER ENT. 1 4
3 NEED FOR SPEED MOST WANTED EA GAMES 2 48
4 - RAYMAN LEGENDS UBISOFT 4 4
5 ASSASSIN'S CREED III LIBERATION UBISOFT 3 48
6 - CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS DECLASSIFIED ACTIVISION 6 46
7 - LITTLEBIGPLANET PS VITA SONY COMPUTER ENT. 7 54
8 UNCHARTED: GOLDEN ABYSS SONY COMPUTER ENT. 10 84
9 FIFA 13 EA SPORTS 5 53
10 re FIFA FOOTBALL EA SPORTS - 57

Software charts compiled by Chart Track, (C)2013 UKIE Ltd

Coming out this month we have Dragon's Crown and Batman, plus a few others to shake up the chart, but with most of those games approaching a year old, Sony really needs to get its PSN sales added or do something to stop the Vita looking like last year's machine.

Currently playing on my Vita/PS3/PS4/PS5


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