It’s no secret that we’ve been concerned about the life expectancy of the Playstation Vita for a while now; With the lack of strong original titles in favor of portable collections of last-gen console ports cutting heavily into its sales, many have already written off Sony’s struggling handheld as dead. Even the announcement of the Cross Play initiative at their E3 show wasn’t enough to drum up interest, leaving audiences wondering whether this meant they were now being asked to buy the same game twice in order to take advantage of it.

According to their press conference at Gamescom earlier today, however, this concern can be stricken from the list. There Sony announced the complement to Cross Play – Cross Buy – which will make it possible to play the same game and transfer the same save file between the PS3 and Vita on certain games with a single purchase. They also confirmed that Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale, Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault, and Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time would all fall under Cross Buy.

As long as this single purchase remains affordable this is just the shot in the arm that the Vita needs. We’ll be keeping an eye out for the price point on Cross Buy, not to mention the Vita sales figures once the aforementioned titles are released.