The Sony Playstation Vita will be released in Toronto on February 22, 2012. As the official Next Generation Portable, it’s a slick looking and a portable powerhouse that will have gamers and geeks drooling.
Pronounced, “vee-tah”, it’s Sony’s latest replacement for the PSP. The PSP was a great handheld but having been released in 2004, it’s about time Sony replaced it. Sony certainly believes in the Vita as they are spending over 50 million dollars marketing it. That’s why the release of the Playstation Vita will be important for those that want the best experience in portable gaming.
The Vita is like a PSP on steroids and it’s bigger too. It’s a cool looking device that has included all the features that are important for gaming. It has the same buttons as the PSP, but now there’s another analog stick on the right side that is essential to gaming control. The 5 inch screen dazzles 16 million colors and is multi-touch. There is a rear touchpad, and 2 cameras – front facing and rear facing. It has WiFi and an alternate version that takes advantage of 3G for use over cellular networks. Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and other apps will also be available through the Playstation Network.
Here are some quick specs of the Vita:
- Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and a Quad-core SGX543MP4+ GPU graphics processor. This is the raw computing and graphics heart and soul of the Vita.
- 5 inch OLED screen featuring 16 million colors. 960 x 540 pixels of qHD resolution. This is about an inch bigger than the older PSP is multi-touch like an iPhone screen.
- Front-facing and rear-facing cameras with 640 x 480 resolution. Not exactly hi-def, but good enough.
- A touchpad on the rear of the console. Similar to a touchpad on your laptop.
- Six-axis motion sensing system. Like on a PS3 controller.
- Built-in GPS and Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and optional 3G support.
- The battery will last for 3-5 hours of gaming.
- Uses Sony Virtual Memory cards for storage.
At $250 for just the console it is quite expensive. You still have to buy a memory stick, and a game, so that $250 is more like $350 before you can start to even enjoy it. Comparatively, the PS3 home console and 2 games could be bought for the same amount of money. Of course you would have to drag your TV and PS3 around with you to make it portable.
The Playstation Vita seems like it will be a great gaming machine, but it’s not the machine that make a great game. Good gameplay design and graphics are what makes a game successful. If the Vita gets some great games under its lineup, then it will be worth the ticket price. The current roster of games are what’s known as the first generation games. Titles are Uncharted Golden Abyss, Little Deviant, Wipeout 2048, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom, Hot Shots Golf, Reality Fighters and a handful more. These games should be avoided if you want to gage how good the Vita is. The first gen games are always the worst. Gaming sites across the web have given these current games about a 7 or 8 out of 10. Games come in a memory card kind of like an SD memory card.
So should you get one? Those who can wait probably should as the Vita will improve and get over the introduction pain of any new release product. The Vita however is a serious gaming device that has no rival so if you have the budget, you could always buy one and show it off to your clearly envious friends. The Vita is like having a PS3 in your pocket. It will be great for travel or long boring moments. The Vita should not be compared to an iPhone or iPad because the Vita is all about gaming. You shouldn’t buy it if you think Angry Birds is the greatest game ever.
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