Sony PS Vita may not be the 'social gaming revolution' we were hoping for

As more details come to light about Sony's upcoming PlayStation Vita handheld gaming system, our hopes of a (as Sony put it) "Social Gaming Revolution" are fading fast. EuroGamer has gathered new details about the console's online capabilities, but honestly, there's nothing truly revolutionary here.

First, there's the feature called Near, which is comparable to the Nintendo's 3DS StreetPass, with a gifting system built in. It tracks your location, and allows you to learn a bit about the Vita owners that are nearby you (what games they've played recently, for one). You can leave gifts in the locations you visit each day, and as other Vita owners visit those same locations, they may be able to pick up said gifts and use them in-game. While it's a novel concept, let's not forget that check-in applications like Gowalla have had item drop-and-pick-up features for quite some time. Besides, the entire virality of Near is dependent on having people within your geographical area that have purchased a Vita, so if you live in a rural neighborhood, your interactions will likely be limited.

Another feature is called Party, and it will allow you to talk with up to three of your friends in a "platform-wide" party, regardless of what you or your friends are doing elsewhere on your Vitas at the time. Again, this is fairly self-explanatory, as Xbox Live's Party Chat and Skype offer two major examples of similar systems.

Finally, there's the LiveArea and Activity trackers, which bring a bit of a Facebook-like setup to the system, as you'll be able to see activities listed in a sort of feed, including posts for when users unlock trophies or reach new leaderboard rankings, and will allow you to comment on them. LiveArea will also allow developers to interact with users, as they can push through announcements of updated content, or even DLC that has been released, and will track users' locations for as-of-now unannounced location features.

As individual systems, these don't really leave much for us to get excited about in the "revolution" column. Sure, cross-game chatting is great, and the Near gifting system should allow users in very active areas to earn in-game items otherwise unavailable to them, but revolutionary? While these combined packages are likely to please many fans, I'm not so sure the adjective fits. We'll make sure to keep track of how Sony further develops the Vita's online and social capabilities, and we can only hope it has more hiding up its sleeve.

Are you excited for the PlayStation Vita? Are you hoping that more social features are added to the system before it launches, or is this a nice round-up of features as-is?

DC Universe Online: Pound on bad guys for free starting next month

If you've always wanted to try out Sony Online Entertainment's DC Universe online (on either PS3 or PC), but didn't want to pay actual money to do so, you'll be happy to know that you'll soon be able to access "the entire game" for free starting next month. As reported by PCWorld, this switch to a freemium pricing plan will still allow users to purchase premium content, but all of the open world gameplay, missions, game updates and patches will be free.

To be specific, DC Universe Online will have three different levels of access. The first and completely free level, gives players access to create just two characters and join a league with other players. From there, the Premium level of users requires that a player spend at least $5 in real money in the game's store to be given that Premium player status for life. This gives them access to larger inventory space, the ability to create more characters and the ability to trade items with others. Finally, if you still want the subscription plan, you can be a Legendary player, paying around $15 a month for access to even more character and inventory slots, along with access to the game's DLC packages at no additional cost. There are plenty of other differences between the three gameplay levels; head over here to check them out.

DC Universe Online is just the latest of many once entirely paid-sub games to go free-to-play in some form. While the most noteworthy case has arguably been World of Warcraft's free-to-play setup for users up to level 20, this is just another case where social and casual players are given an opportunity to break away from Facebook simulators and jump into the world of true MMOs. While the two worlds are (for the most part) entirely different, a bigger selection is definitely not a bad thing.

Will you try out DC Universe Online when it goes free-to-play next month?