A while ago, people opined that the PS Vita – despite horrible battery life and a dearth of compelling game titles – could become a sort of “gamers iPad,” a tool that ends up being more than just a console. That dream is coming closer to fruition with the announcement of Skype for Vita. → Read More
Apparently there are still dedicated gamers out there. Sony stated on Tuesday that the Vita is exceeding its expectations and over 1.2 million units have sold worldwide. The Vita hit the U.S. and European market last week after launching in Japan in the middle of December 2011. Sony announced in early January at CES that only 500k Vitas sold in its home market. Many pundits and outlet stated the… → Read More
I’ve enjoyed the PS Vita for a couple of weeks now. It’s a fun device, but as John describes in our review, it feels like the last of its kind. Single function devices are no longer relevant and as much as Sony tried, the Vita is still pretty much a dedicated gaming handheld.
The company launched an app store for the Vita today, which folds Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, and Flickr apps into the… → Read More
Like a line of hard-marching Lemmings (or a swarm of Patapons), Sony’s countless, niggling enemies would like nothing better than to distract and steal the company’s hard-won fan base. The Playstation has long been the gold standard in console gaming, despite the Xbox’s recent challenges to the throne. And Sony does a good job. Graphics are better, gameplay is or can be more immersive, and in the… → Read More
The Playstation Vita handheld system, unveiled at E3 last year, went on sale just before the holidays in Japan. It saw serious sales: around 325,000 units (500,000 by Sony’s reckoning) were sold in its opening week. Naturally numbers tend to drop after the initial rush, and the next week saw healthy sales of around 72,000. But The numbers kept decreasing, and it is now reported that for the week… → Read More
Sony Computer Entertainment reported some solid sales numbers for its various PlayStation systems for the past holiday season today. Sony says that they moved a total of 6.5 million PlayStation 2/3/PSP/Vita units worldwide (Sony defines “holiday season” as between November 21 and January 5 in Asia, November 21 through December 31 in America, and November 18 through December 31 in Europe). → Read More
Sony has managed to sell a total of 321,407 PlayStation Vitas on December 17 (the day it was launched in Japan) and 18, Japanese video game magazine Famitsu is reporting [JP] today. This pretty solid number means that big S has sold about 46% of its initial shipment of Vitas (which is rumored to be around 700,000 units) in 48 hours.
The Famitsu says that back on December 12, 2004 (the day the… → Read More
Sony can’t get much right these days. They’ve dissolved their partnership with Ericsson so they have no dog in the mobile fight and their Blu-Ray/3D TV push is, at best, an afterthought with consumers. Nobody wants Sony laptops, what with all the ultrabooks out there. The only thing that can save them is gaming.
The first great Sony hope is the Vita, Sony’s handheld gaming console. Designed to… → Read More
In case you are planning to buy Sony’s new handheld PlayStation Vita and were wondering what will happen to your UMDs, Sony finally made an announcement [JP] today, albeit for the Japanese market only at this point. The company says it will establish a so-called UMD Passport Program to make it possible to download versions of your personal UMD games.
There is a bit of work involved, however… → Read More
The launch of Sony’s new handheld console Vita in Japan is just two months away (December 17), so it’s about time big S made some official announcements regarding software prices. In a nut shell, the first batch of titles will not be sold for cheap.
To be more concrete, the prices for a total of four launch games are now fixed. → Read More
Apart from fixing the Japan release date for the Playstation Vita (December 17) today, Sony also announced [press release in English] the handheld’s full launch line-up for its home market: a total of 28 different titles (games and applications) will be made available for early buyers of the device.
Sony also said there are a total of 100 different games being developed by companies worldwide… → Read More
Sony is currently holding a press conference in Tokyo where the company said that the Playstation Vita, its new handheld console, will hit stores in Japan on December 17, just in time for the holidays (this decision was kind of announced last month actually). For the 3G connection, Sony partnered up with Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo and laid out 3G pricing plans for the first time… → Read More
During a press conference at the Gamescom gaming conference in Cologne, Sony announced a few new features for their new handheld console, the Vita (watch our hands-on at E3 here). Among them were support for Foursquare and Skype. The references were made while talking about the 3G capabilities of the $300 model, but it wasn’t implied that a 3G connection would be required.
More powerful than… → Read More
I hope you didn’t have the PS Vita on your Christmas list this year. Sony’s next-gen portable is going to reach the States or Europe until next year per an AP interview with Sony Corp. Executive Deputy President Kazuo Hirai. The executive acknowledged that missing the holiday season is going to be costly, “That’s when you do half your year’s sales,” he said. “This is going to prove painful for… → Read More
We heard about the Playstation Vita’s online capabilities long before we even knew its name, but the official details are just now solidifying. We knew it would have a net-connected staging area for each game, and a proximity-based social tool (LiveArea and Near respectively), and although some of the functions there are intact, they’ve been tweaked a bit and the features have changed. → Read More
Following the security breach in the PlayStation network in April (77 million PlayStation Network user accounts were compromised), Sony saw a radical management reshuffle in its gaming division, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEI), today. As you could expect, big S denies a connection between both incidents, but today’s decision probably doesn’t surprise anyone. → Read More
Some Vita-pre-ordering mofos are getting word from Amazon that their shiny new handheld will not, in fact, be arriving “this holiday season” (which implies November and early December), but may rather be shipping on the last day of the year, and arriving in early January. I know, first world problems, right? But it does mean that Sony will miss out on a huge sales opportunity, and a… → Read More
Although region locking doesn’t affect the majority of gamers, among the hardcore it tends to be a sticking point. Some games have better or earlier releases in other countries, and the ability to import and play them is an important one for, say, JRPG fans or expats. Fortunately, the Vita will be region-free, meaning you won’t have to worry whether your device or game is Japanese… → Read More
We had a pleasant morning checking out the Sony and Nintendo booths, getting hands-on with a few launch games and feeling up the hardware. The device really is remarkably light; you’d expect such a powerhouse to be heavy and bulky, but it’s quite petite. Unfortunately the units there were all tethered, and all their untethered units were broken. Just block out the cords with your hand and it’s… → Read More
Matt may think that the Wii U is the E3 champion, but I’m not convinced. It looks like a fun and versatile device, but I’m not sure it’s as accessible as the Wii, which focused on motion and a few primary buttons to make gaming as simple as possible. The Wii U is clearly powerful in some ways but not nearly the breakthrough device the Wii was.
The Playstation Vita, on the other hand, isn’t even… → Read More
The Next-Generation Portable we’ve been hearing about for a good five months now has finally been owned up to by Sony. It is, as rumors had it, called the Playstation Vita, and the many features we’ve heard about (dual touchscreens, cameras, Near, and so on) are all official. All the specs and stuff were already detailed back in January, but we’re just now seeing the actual… → Read More
Sony’s NGP, or “Vita” if the leaks are accurate, just went up a notch in my opinion. Although I still feel that it’s never going to make the splash that “lighter” game systems will make (an issue the 3DS shares to some extent), they seem to be doing this one right at least. They’ve just announced that the NGP will be backwards-compatible with all PSP games. That’s a major value bump. → Read More
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