Sony has taken to its blog to announce two apps that will be available for Vita owners in the U.S. soon: Friend Network and Imaginstruments. Apparently these will join a “slew of exceptional new applications” that have recently come to the Vita. I don't know how many apps are available for the Vita in the U.S., but here in the U.K. there are just over twenty in total, hardly what I'd call a slew.
Friend Network is a social app that looks a lot like Animal Crossing. Players are represented by avatars, and can use them to wander through their own colourful “town space” with Toro (the Sony Cat) as their guide. You grow this town space by growing your friends list, with the ultimate goal to have 100 friends in the app. If you don't think you know quite that many people in real life who have a Vita, then you can go to a virtual lobby in the app and exchange virtual business cards with the strangers you meet there in the hope that they'll become your friends. Or, you can connect to Facebook and Twitter to see which of your friends on those networks are also using Friend Network and try to boost your numbers that way.
Imaginstruments is another music app, in which players can “compose a virtually endless amount of unique music”. Sony calls it “one-of-a-kind”, but it looks like pretty standard fare, with a visualisation tool that lets you place various instruments at different points in the track to create the sound you want.
It's always good to see new content announced for the Vita, but – as a lot of the commenters point out – it would be nice to see that energy go towards creating new games or at least fixing existing apps like Wake-up Club.
