PSVita. That’s the name Sony has given to its PlayStation Portable successor.
Sony also showed off footage and demos from their hottest upcoming titles. But will 2011 always be Sony’s year of the PSN meltdown? Or did their showing at this year’s E3 help that image fade?
PlayStation head honcho Jack Tretton took the stage and addressed the “elephant in the room” right off the bat, apologizing to gamers for the PSN security breach. With that out of the way, Sony got down to business.
Sony’s big event this year focused mostly on the PSVita handheld device.
This bad boy’s got tons of horsepower, along with a fancy OLED touchscreen, a rear touch panel that can also be used for unique game controls, dual analog sticks, both front and rear cameras, gyroscope and accelerometer, and more. It runs games off of digital downloads and a specialized flash memory card, and it comes in 2 flavors: Wifi, and Wifi + 3G. The 3G version is wired for AT&T’s network (an announcement that caused loud groans throughout the audience), and will cost $299. The Wifi-only model will run $249. Both are expected in stores by this holiday season.
Sony also announced a dedicated 3D TV built just for PlayStation players. (You can use it for watching live TV too, of course, but it’s branded for PS gaming.) The medium-sized flatscreen offers a very unique capability: instead of splitting the screen when two local gamers are playing together, the screen will display two different images overlaid atop one another. Both gamers get a full-screen experience, but their orientation to the screen will determine which image they see. And both images are in 3D. It’s undeniably cool.
