With so many great games available on Android and iPhone smart phones – and Angry Birds available on all – it would seem our portable gaming jones would be satisfied.
Not so fast, says Sony. On Feb. 22, 2012, the company's latest portable gaming gadget, the Vita, will go on sale for $250 for the Wi-Fi only model and $300 for a Wi-Fi plus 3G version.
I got a chance to fiddle with Vita earlier this week. I'm no gamer – I'm too OCD to start, especially since I already play Scrabble waaaaaay too much (and don't want to turn into Alec Baldwin) – but I do know a sophisticated piece of digital machinery and the most advanced portable gaming gadget ever when I see it. And I saw it.
Here's everything you need to know about the Sony Vita.
Simple specs
You'll notice two obvious attributes on Vita – its bright 5-inch, 960 x 576 pixel touch screen and, even more impressive for gamers, dual joysticks, a first for a portable game device.
What you won't see but feel is Vita's rear, which also is touch-sensitive for additional game control. Like many of Vita's new features (described in more depth below), games have to be specially designed to take advantage of this rear touch surface.
As noted, I'm no gamer so I don't know why you need a touch screen on both front and rear and two joysticks – I'm not even sure how you can physically coordinate the manipulation all four of these plus all the buttons in the heat of shooting the alien action, but I'm sure you hard core gamers out there likely can think of a multitude of multi-input scenarios.
Behind Vita's visible controls are a quad core processor (most bleeding-edge smart phones offer "just" dual core engines) to enable more sophisticated graphics and gaming performance, a magnetometer (a compass to you and me), an accelerometer and a gyroscope, just like a smart phone, all so action on the screen can react to you simply moving Vita around.
Like on a smart phone, you'll be able to watch movies, view photos, play music, map yourself via GPS and surf the Web on a full Web browser on Vita.
Vita has slots for two memory cards, both proprietary: the Vita Game Card, around the size of a standard SD card, on which physical games will be sold in stores, and something called "removable media" (clever name, eh?), a micro SD-like card on which to store downloaded games, along with your music, photos, movies, and other media.
There is no user storage memory on the Vita. Removable cards will be available in 4, 8, 16 and 32 GB capacities. Prices on these memory cards haven't been set yet.
Vita's special features
Sony has assembled something beyond a collection of specs and silicon, imbuing Vita with some fancy features to take advantage both of the likely presence of a PlayStation 3 (PS3) in your home and the cloud.
Cross Play and Cross Save, for instance, lets you play a game on PS3, save your place in the cloud, download the saved version to Vita and continue playing, then back to PS3 again.
That's the good news. The bad news is, Cross Play and Cross save works only on games designed for it. Worse, you have to buy both the PS3 and the Vita version of the game, which I think is absurd. Sony is thinking of bundling both versions together, which only slightly lowers the absurdity level.
Remote Connect does just what it sounds like – via Wi-Fi, Vita can communicate with your home PS3 from wherever you are in the world to play games or movies stored there.
At home, you can use Vita as a PS3 controller using Bluetooth. On some PS3 games played on your big screen HDTV, you'll be able to set strategy on the Vita screen, away from the prying eyes of your opponents.
In Party mode, you can text or chat with up to eight fellow Vita players – even if everyone is playing a different game, a portable playing first, according to Sony. For chatting, at least half the players have to be connected via Wi-Fi.
And, most impressively, if you opt into Near, your Vita will be able to "see" other Vita Wi-Fi/3G-connected players who have opted into Near and who are playing the same game you are – over several kilometers. You can then invite them to play against you. If you're bothered by all the social gaming activity, you can turn Near to play alone.
Part of Near is a new kind of virtual geocaching. You can leave virtual objects from particular games in real-life places – a park, a store, a street corner, whatever – for other gamers to treasure hunt. When the hunters get near the object's physical hiding place, it appears on their screen within the context of the game.
As you can see, there's a lot Vita can do that your Android or iPhone can't – at least right now.
Vita's games
No prices have been set the games that will be available at or soon after Vita's launch (15 at least, likely more). These Vita games will include:
And that's most of what space allows me to tell you about Sony's Vita.