Sony TGS Conference 2011: Vita dated for December 17
SCEJ has confirmed that PlayStation Vita will ship on December 17 in Japan, reconfirming a price of ¥29,980 for the 3G version and ¥24,980 for the WiFi SKU.
SCEJ has confirmed that PlayStation Vita will ship on December 17 in Japan, re-asserting a price of ¥29,980 (£248/€286/$390) for the 3G version and ¥24,980 (£206/€239/$325) for the WiFi-only machine, speaking at the firm's TGS 2011 press conference.
NTT Docomo was confirmed as Vita's 3G partner in Japan, as was a pre-paid system for 3G data. It's to cost ¥980 (£8.09, €9.36, $12.74) for a 20-hour pre-paid card, and ¥4,980 (£41.10, €47.54, $64.73) for 100 hours pre-paid.
No details were given for any western launches.
Games - farsands of 'em
Square Enix's Shinji Hashimoto dropped the biggest game announcement of the conference, confirming a special tenth anniversary edition of Final Fantasy X for Vita and PS3. There was no date, however.
Hashimoto-san also announced Lord of Apocalypse for Vita - the action-RPG that leaked earlier from Famitsu - and something called Hell's Army, which will appear at December launch.
Final Fantasy Type-0 will launch on October 27 for PSP, and FFXIII-2 will hit PS3 in December in Japan, he said.
Konami's Hideo Kojima also appeared leaning on the Transfarring system, which tracks play on both PS3 and Vita, synching progress.
He confirmed the Metal Gear Solid HD Edition for Vita: it's releasing next year before announcing a Zone of the Enders HD Edition for 2012, showing a very short video.
The ZoE pack will include both the first and second games from the mech shooter series.
Kojiima then said that his Fox engine will support Vita, meaning you'll essentially be getting two versions in one. Don't hold your breath, though: his next game will "take a while".
Capcom's Yoshi Ono confirmed Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 for Vita, as had been previously leaked.
The fighter's to have online play and will use Vita's Near app to find players. It was confirmed as a launch game.
Massami Yamamoto, the SCE WWS Japan boss, showed Everybody's Golf 6, talking about its online and competitive features. It's to have national tournaments, apparently.
Sony said Vita will launch with 26 games, including Everybody's Golf 6, Ridge Racer, a Michael Jackson title, BlazBlue, Dream Club Portable, F1 2011, Virtua Tennis 4, and much more.
A stream of developers then appeared on the screen, including Tomonobu Itagaki and Toshihiro Nagoshi: Sony said 100 Vita games will be out by next March.
Vita pre-orders will begin on October 15.
In the House
The event started with a Japanese address from Andrew House, the now-president of Sony Computer Entertainment, in which he talked about working in the US and Europe, and how excited he is to be working with the PlayStation brand.
PlayStation 3 has now sold shipped 51.8 million units worldwide, Sony said, and PSP has moved 71.4 million.
Red and blue PS3 SKUs were confirmed for Japan, as was a red and black PSP.
Sony talked about the PSN hacking outage, and said the issue had raised awareness of security in the organisation and that things on PSN are now "vibrant".
Vita was the main topic for the day, though, with SCEJ boss Hiroshi Kawano saying the handheld is important for Sony's growth, before showing a video of the machine in action.
Gravity Daze was the first game to be shown running amid a variety of social networking apps. A four-player game of Everybody's Golf and a core RPG were also seen.
After confirming Vita's date and 3G data pricing, Kawano-san went on to demo the unit itself on stage, showing its UI, setting time and date, connecting to a mock 3G network and more.
SCEJ's Kenjo Akiyama showed off a customisable desktop, his dog-based wallpaper and played a Spider Man movie trailer.
The console's music player was also shown.
Vita has an iOS- and Android-style slide interface for different home screens, it was seen. The handheld's picture viewer works as it does on a phone, with the user pulling images to either side of the screen.
Akiyama-san then showed Vita's Welcome Pack, an interface training program in which the user's shown how to open and operate apps.
We saw the browser; a content manager that works with PS3; a Friends management system; Trophies; and reconfirmation that Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Foursquare will all appear on Vita.
Sony will take Vita on tour in Japan from November, visiting Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo and Fukuoka.
The press conference took place the day before Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida provides the show's keynote, from which VG247's Brenna Hillier will be reporting live.
For more details on what's happening at TGS this week, check out Brenna's guide.