It’s official. Sony’s NGP is now the new PlayStation Vita. Vita, which is Latin for the word life, incorporates everything that makes the PlayStation brand unique and combines it with aspects from your own personal life to create new experiences never before seen on a handheld. With the announcement of Sony’s newly branded portable, the E3 show floor at the Sony booth became jam packed with eager journalists willing to wait for hours in line to get their first hands-on with the PlayStation Vita. Luckily for me, I also became one of those eager and patient journalists waiting in line to play the new portable, and trust me; the wait was well worth it. The PS Vita is a beautiful piece of hardware and, quite frankly, blows both the original PSP and, in some ways, even the 3DS out of the water.
After a lengthy 3-hour wait in line, I finally got to play the PS Vita for the first time. At the PS Vita booth, I was able to play 5 different games for four minutes each. I got the chance to jump around with Sackboy in Little Big Planet, score service aces with ease using the PS Vita’s touch screen in Virtua Tennis 4, shoot kidnapping robots in real life in Little Deviants, stick and roll on walls to the beats of Sound Shapes, and run and gun with Nathan Drake in Uncharted: Golden Abyss. All of these games used the PS Vita’s various control options in some form or another and truly showcased what the PS Vita is capable of. I’ll be writing in more detail on each of these games later on, so keep your eyes posted on our website.
The New PlayStation Vita
Once I got the chance to hold the new handheld in my hands, the portable felt surprisingly comfortable. The first thing I noticed about the PS Vita is how surprisingly light it felt. It has the same weight as a PSP 2000 and the same thickness of the PSP 1000. Although my first impression of the PS Vita before I held it in my hands was how heavy I was expecting it to be, I was completely thrown off guard when I first grabbed it and felt how light it was. The new portable is very comfortable in your hands and gives you no problems to reach the various controls found on the new system.
Sony’s new handheld comes jam packed with built in features that give other handheld devices already in the market a run for their money. The PlayStation Vita includes, among a variety of things, a front multi-touch screen similar to the functionality of an iPod Touch but illuminated in an OLED display. A multi-touch track pad is also located in the back of the system. At first, I thought that the rear touch pad was going to be made of some sort of rubbery material because of some early images I saw of the system but, surprisingly, is made out of the same material that houses the PlayStation Vita and is very precise and exactly similar in length and width as the PS Vitas’ front multi touch display.
Touch Controls are Very Responsive, Just like on an iPhone
In addition, the system comes with dual analog sticks that feel similar to the analog sticks found in dual shock 3 controllers of the PlayStation 3, only much smaller. It also has front and rear facing cameras and can be used to display augmented reality games that run much smoother than those found on the 3DS. PlayStation Vita also has a built in Six-axis motion sensing system composed of a three-axis gyroscope and accelerometer, and is further supported by a three-axis electronic compass that works together to accurately track all forms of motion on the system.
Finally, the new handheld comes with access to GPS systems used to create new gaming experiences, uses a new, small, flash memory based card that will be dedicated to PS Vita software, cross-plays with specific games on the PS3 online, and connects to both Wi-Fi and 3G networks that allow access to the PlayStation Network, complete with full trophy support and backwards compatibility with PSP games found on the PlayStation Store. Toss in a bunch of built-in applications specifically made for the PS Vita along with an Internet browser and the ability to chat with friends in a party system a la Xbox Live and you got yourself an extremely competent looking handheld device. The $250 dollar entry point is just the icing on an already sweet looking cake.
PlayStation Vita is already on its way to become a serious contender to Nintendo’s 3DS, even more so than the original PSP. Let’s just hope that the battery life is also another huge plus to add to this already spectacular looking handheld. Expect to see this bad boy out by the holiday season later on this year.
