PS Vita won’t be here until 2012, despite Sony hinting a pre Christmas release for the much anticipated handheld console.
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| Pictured: PS Vita to be delayed until early 2012. |
Sony Corp. Executive Deputy President Kazuo Hirai said yesterday the forthcoming Vita will go on sale on home turf in Japan by 2011 close, but unfortunately the rest of us will have to sit it out until early 2012.
And ditto for gamers in the U.S. and Europe.
The Japanese giant had said a global rollout would start late this year, with presumption being that it would be hitting shelves in time for the holidays.
Vita will have an asking price of $249 here for Wi-Fi only version, $299 (Wi-Fi/3G).
Describing the handheld as jam packed and “very affordable” Sony also rejected suggestions it would lower its price in response to the recent price drop by Nintendo 3DS, which has now fallen by $100 here in Australia.
“We packed so much into the device and made it very affordable,” Hirai told journalists at Sony’s Tokyo headquarters on Thursday.
“There is no need to lower the price just because somebody else that happens to be in the video game business decided that they were going to lower their price.”
The 5″ multi touch screen, described as next gen console but with social connectivity, coming as Wi-Fi and 3G/Wi-Fi models.
Vita incorporates an OLED screen in front and a multi-touch pad at the rear, with dual analogue sticks enable a wider range of game genres.
Last week we revealed Vita will “have a whole lot of headroom in terms of GPU power, CPU power and indeed RAM”, – a 4 core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and another 4 core SGX543MP4+ GPU, to be precise.
The delay will mean Sony will miss the crucial Christmas rush, which analysts are saying will be detrimental for Vita’s overall performance.
Koki Shiraishi, electronics analyst for Daiwa Securities Capital Markets in Tokyo, said missing Christmas was a serious setback, in particular for overseas gaming markets.
“That’s when you do half your year’s sales,” he said. “This is going to prove painful for Sony.”
PS Vita will enable infinite possibilities for you to “encounter,” “connect,” “discover,” “share” and “play” with your friends wherever they are,” John Koller, Director, Sony Hardware Marketing wrote in his blog.
PS, better be worth the wait.
