Vita Delayed Until 2012 in US and Europe
August 15, 2011 by admin
Filed under About PS Vita, Featured PS Vita
Sony has announced that their much anticipated Playstation Vita handheld game console will not be made available in the United States and Europe until sometime in 2012. The new game system is still scheduled to be released by the end of 2011 in Japan, but Western gamers will have to wait a bit longer. This is indeed bad news for those who were hoping to have a brand new Vita for Christmas this year.
There has been speculation that the reason for this delay is because of Nintendo’s recent decision to slash the price of their own handheld system, the 3DS. The 3DS will most likely be the Vita’s main competitor, and a price cut would indeed turn it into stiff competition when the holiday season rolls around. However, Sony vice president Kazuo Hirai has stated that this is not the case, and that the real reason for the delay is because Sony wants to ensure that key titles will be ready for the system’s launch.
“We packed so much into the device to make it very affordable,” Hirai told reporters at Sony’s headquarters in Tokyo. “There is no need to lower the price just because someone else…decided they were going to lower their price.”
There is no word on when exactly the Playstation Vita will be made available to American and European gamers, but it is expected that the originally announced price of $249 will still hold true.
Gamers all over the world will have a lot to be excited about once the Vita is made available worldwide. The Playstation Vita is essentially the next generation version of the Playstation Portable, or PSP. It will include two analog sticks similar to those found on the Playstation 3 controllers, a five-inch touchscreen, cameras on the front and back of the device, and support for Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. There will also be a slightly more expensive 3G version of the console. It will also be fully backwards compatible with all PSP games digitally released on the Playstation Network. The graphics of the older games will also be upscaled and smoothed via a software emulator.
