A string of changes today to some Playstation Vita apps...

Sounds like YouTube is getting a "delisting" of sorts, where you can no longer download the app, however you will be able to still use the app if you have already downloaded it previously, but Sony will end official support of it in April. I'm assuming this is people calling/e-mailing complaining something is broken in it.

I noticed in recent days that YouTube has started to add new features such as auto-playing the next recommended video once the initial video has finished (yuck, imho). I'm wondering if perhaps the usage of YouTube on Vita is so small, that YouTube just decided not to waste resources upgrading the vita app with the latest youtube technologies. (I'm just theorizing here... things like autoplay could be specific to web)

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What's very interesting is the map app getting pulled in a future firmware update, which will essentially render the near app pratically useless. Well, in my opnion Near is already pretty useless. I know some early launch games allowed you to leave in-game items for people that were close to you, which honestly was a pretty clever idea I mean, hey I can pick up this weapon/skin to use in Resistance which might motivate me to buy Resistance. However I don't know how many of you ever used near but the app makes no damn sense at all. Granted I've had no reason to check the app since the vita initially launched but.... it doesn't have the ease of a checkin app of FourSquare/Swarm or the Gameification of Ingress. It was just... weird and one of those things I always wrote off as "Maybe it makes more sense to the Japanese players..."


Was anyone here using near? Are you sad to hear about the map app, or is this one of those cases where you totally forgot about a particular game/app until the moment the big company decides they're going to kill it off?

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I used Near a bit, but I don't care that it is going away. I got some cool items for Uncharted and raced peoples ghosts in Rayman Origins but outside of that I just check it every once in a while to see what games are trending in my neighborhood. Usually it's whatever games are free on the Vita through PS Plus in a given month. The app was not designed very well and had a confusing interface. Maybe it would have been better if they fixed it.

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The biggest problem with Near was that it was impossible to figure out what the damn point of it was, how one was supposed to be using it, and even how to properly navigate it...oh, I guess that's three problems...LOL...

Not to mention that my Near database would corrupt or crash regularly, forcing me to reinstall it and start whatever it was doing from scratch...

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