Gravity Rush Remaster listing spotted for PS4, keep the Vita ports coming

Following the adventures of a young gravity-manipulating woman and a cat shaped from a starry void, Gravity Rush is still one of the coolest games on PS Vita. Unfortunately, not many people own a Vita, so relatively few have had the chance to float along with Kat and Dusty three years after their debut. That may be changing soon.

The Korean Games Ratings Board has a listing for Gravity Rush Remaster on PS4, submitted for classification on March 20. Sony's made no mention of any plans to bring Gravity Rush to its new-gen home console - or said anything about its sequel in years, come to think of it - but the board has been a pretty reliable source of leaked title announcements in the past. I asked Sony if it can confirm the listing's legitimacy, and I'll let you know when I hear back.

Gravity Rush is a personal favorite, but it's tough to recommend picking up a new system just for it and a couple dozen others (not even a dozen if you don't like JRPGs or indies). And now that Sony's ending support for Vita features like PlayStation Mobile, Maps, and parts of Near, it's looking even more grim. None of those features were exactly selling points before - I'm still not 100-percent sure what Near was supposed to do - though it's never a good sign when bits of the user experience start rotting off.

But I'd be happy to point folks toward a well-made PS4 port of Gravity Rush, and Tearaway Unfolded looks great from what we've seen so far. I just hope the Vita-to-PS4 evacuation route doesn't stop there, because the best thing that can be done for Vita at this point is to put its games on a console people actually own. More than 20 million PS4s have been sold so far, and beyond Bloodborne, all their owners are looking at a relatively thin lineup of exclusive releases this year - particularly with Uncharted 4 pushed back to 2016. Sony could let them see what they missed on Vita and fill out the calendar at the same time.

Gravity Rush used Vita's motion controls to make you feel like you were looking through a window into Hekseville, but PS4's far superior analog sticks could make up most of the difference. And its cel-shaded characters would need minimal tweaks to look great on the big screen. Similarly, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Killzone: Mercenary, Danganronpa, and Persona 4 Golden (GR+'s pick for best Vita game) could all make for lovely experiences on PS4. I'd particularly like to see Freedom Wars given a second lease on life (sentence): its persistent online world and multiplayer battles populated by customizable convicts look novel, but it could be tough to find anyone else to play with outside of Japan.

Digging deeper into Vita's library isn't a perfect solution; PS4 still needs more big-ticket games to keep its owners happy and court new buyers, and porting Vita's best games would nullify the few remaining reasons to buy the system, not to mention bringing over third-party titles like Danganronpa would require an external push. But Sony's already started down this path with Tearaway and (hopefully) Gravity Rush, and it's probably for the best.

Either way, I'll continue to cherish my Vita as the slightly awkward, but still cute, PS4 Remote Play and indie machine it's grown up to become.