The Philippine Online Chronicles

Sony President of the Consumer Products & Services Group Hirai Kazuo formally announced the PlayStation Vita at Sony's E3 2011 press conference last Monday. The new handheld is the successor to the PlayStation Portable, which has sold 70 million units worldwide.

The PlayStation Vita is filled to the brim with features: two DualShock-quality analogue sticks, front and rear touch input, SixAxis motion control, a five-inch OLED display, and front and rear cameras that “blur the line between reality and interactive entertainment like nothing before”. Hirai stated that this blurring makes up the name, which means “life”.

The Vita will come in two models—a wi-fi only and wi-fi/3G. The 3G mobile partner for the States is AT&T, which raised a collective groan for the audience. The Vita will also incorporate location-based and social gaming, such as “Party”, their term for cross-game chat, and “Near”, which appears to be the Vita’s version of the 3DS’s StreetPass mechanic.

Games for the Vita then proceeded to steal the show, starting with Uncharted: Golden Abyss. The game, which takes place before the first game in the series, is so similar in visual fidelity to the console Uncharted games it’s astounding. The effects are very visually impressive, with water shaders making Nathan Drake wet when he goes into water and dripping and eventually dry as when he leaves it. The lighting effects are what you would expect from an Uncharted game as well. Sony Bend has been developing the title for nearly two years, which explains the graphics—Sony bend pushed the PSP to the limit with their titles for it as well.

Graphics aside, the gameplay seems to be authentic Uncharted: there’s stealth kills, third-person shooting, and environmental traversal. Where it makes sense, the added input of the NGP is integrated as well: players can tap an enemy to punch him, pick up items and weapons by tapping them, and trace out a path on a wall to be scaled, among other things. These controls are wholly optional and can be interchanged freely with traditional input, resulting in a game that you can “play as you like.”

A highly-touted feature of the Vita is its ability to cross-play with the PS3, which means players can play a game on the Vita, save it, then pick up right where you left off on the PS3 counterpart of the same game. The title Ruin was used to show this off, where demoer Jeff Litchford of Idol Minds played the action RPG on the Vita, saved it to the cloud, and proceeded to continue on the PS3, which garnered great applause.

The Vita’s modes of input make many games much easier. Eric Waas of Sony San Diego presented ModNation Racers for the Vita, which is an entirely new entry in the kart racing series. In addition to the traditional controls for racing, users can now use the front and rear touch panels to create their own tracks—the demoer was able to draw a track by tracing on the screen with his finger, then raise terrain by manipulating the rear touchpad. He was also able to make lakes and valleys by tapping on the screen and “hollowing it out”, and even adjust the lighting of the entire track. He then tested out the track onstage immediately. It seemed to be very intuitive, and a hint of how the Vita’s various interfaces can enhance established mechanics.

In addition to saving to the cloud, the Vita interacts with the PS3 in two more ways: “CrossPlay” which allows PS3 and Vita versions of the same game to compete with each other online, and content sharing. The latter is exemplified by LittleBigPlanet for the Vita, which includes all the tools from LittleBigPlanet 2.

The user-generated platformer uses all the Vita's inputs to make and play content—front and back touching, even using the camera to take pictures of real-world objects and put them in-game, which contributes to Hirai’s vision of “blurring reality”. The game also supports costume sharing with the PS3 version of the game.

The next presentation stirred up the excitable crowd even more—Capcom’s Ono Yoshinori (accompanied by his enthusiastic translator) announced that crossover fighting game Street Fighter X Tekken would also be released on the Vita, with inFamous protagonist Cole as part of the roster. Ono then proceeded to pull a Vita from his pocket, plug the charger cord in, and demonstrate. The game looks as expected; visually identical to the console versions.

After Ono’s demonstration, a montage of several Vita titles was shown, including the games Gravity, Little Deviants, Sound Shapes, Hustle Kings, Super Stardust Delta, Reality Fighters, Hot Shots Golf, Shinobido, Virtua Tennis, and Dynasty Warriors. Strangely enough, there was no mention of either Call of Duty or an Epic Games title, which were central to the Vita’s announcement in Japan in January, when the system was unveiled as the NGP.

Hirai Kazuo then took the stage again to announce the Vita’s price: USD 249 for the wi-fi only model (which garnered the loudest applause of the night) and USD 299 for the wi-fi/3G model. This means the wi-fi only model is the same price as the Nintendo 3DS, the Vita’s main competitor in the handheld market. Pricing of games hasn’t been formally revealed, but it is rumored to be in the same price range as home console titles.

Sony’s press conference was a breath of fresh air following Microsoft’s. They pushed Move just enough for it to not be sickening, as well as announcing its integration in several must-have first- and third-party titles. The PlayStation Vita announcement was easily the highlight of the presentation (and is a prime contender for “Best of E3”). Its competitive pricing shows that Sony has learned from past price mistakes, though the effects of their pricing the Vita at a massive loss remains to be seen. In the wake of the PSN debacle, Sony has been able to win back some measure of consumer trust, and build up hype for their next system launch.

Sony E3 2011 Press Conference Coverage:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Images courtesy of Sony's live stream of the conference.