Sony to announce Vita release date at Tokyo Game Show

Just a day after confirming that it’ll release in Japan this year, with Europe and US to follow early next year, Sony has said it’ll announce the release date of PlayStation Vita at Tokyo Game Show.

A blog post from SCEJ president Hiroshi Kawano confirmed the news, adding that the date “is finalized.”

Sony WorldWide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshdia will give the keynote to this year’s show, and consumers will be able to try the handheld at the show. It’ll also be playable at gamescom in a couple of weeks.

Sony: No Vita price cut following 3DS drop

Sony has no intention of altering its PS Vita pricing strategy following Nintendo's decision to cut the 3DS price by over a third.

That's according to executive vice president Kaz Hirai, who told reporters at the company's Tokyo headquarters: "We packed so much into the device and made it very affordable.

"There is no need to lower the price just because somebody else that happens to be in the video game business decided that they were going to lower their price," he added, according to the Associated Press.

The Wi-Fi Vita model is set to cost 24,980 yen when it goes on sale in Japan, the same price 3DS launched at. However, from August 11, the 3DS price will be lowered to 15,000 yen.

Vita Clears FCC, Gets Ready for US Release

In the US, the Federal Communications Commission must clear devices with hardware that can communicate with other devices or the internet – such as with the Vita’s 3G and Wi-Fi capabilities. Therefore, before a product is released, and when it is in the final stages of development, it must first be approved by the FCC.

The PlayStation Vita has now been approved by the FCC, which means that the handheld has passed the final step before a consumer electronics device is shipped to retailers. That means that the Vita is pretty much ready to release in the US, adding to multiple rumors that it will have a fall release date.

Of course, Sony still has to ensure that their supply chain is ready to support the demand for the Vita while keeping costs low. Additionally, the Vita’s launch software and Operating System will also need to be finalized, but one thing is for sure – the Vita has just got one step closer to release.

Alleged PS Vita RAM cut could be “good for developers”

Dani Sánchez-Crespo, CEO of PSP games studio Novarama doesn’t seem to concerned with the rumoured halving of RAM in the Wi-Fi model of PS Vita, because if true, it wouldn’t have any affect on his company’s projects.


Speaking with Develop, Sánchez-Crespo didn’t seem too concerned when asked about the possibility.
“No that won’t affect us,” he said. “It’s actually good for developers to work under constraint. Generally for Vita, we still have a whole lot of headroom in terms of GPU power, CPU power and indeed RAM”.

Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida previously implied that claims of RAM in the non-3G model being halved from 512MB to 256MB – ostensibly to allow it to compete more competitively with the Nintendo 3DS on price – may not have been true.

“Do not believe everything you read on the Internet,” he said.

If Sony has indeed removed RAM purely for price considerations, it won’t have been delighted to hear this morning’s news that Nintendo are slashing the price of the 3DS by around a third in all territories.

Sony 'thinking about' PS Vita Activity feature for PS3

Sony’s hinted that PlayStation Vita’s Activity feature may eventually come to PlayStation 3.

Speaking at the Develop 2011 conference, Sony Europe’s R&D manager Phil Rogers commented, "We're thinking about it,” adding, “Possibly, but if you think of the XMB interface: how do you represent that there?

"But we're thinking about it and it's a feature that a lot of developers and publishers asked for it because it's really useful to keep that whole [game] discussion [going]." 

For those out of the loop, Activity offers a feed of your friends’ game-related achievements, such as telling you the amount of Trophies your mate has earned for a specific title. In addition, it’ll also allow gamers to retweet friends and comment on their accomplishments.
PS Vita's online component is comprised of four key features: LiveArea, Near, Party and, of course, Activity.

LittleBigPlanet Vita studio now a PlayStation exclusive developer

LittleBigPlanet PS Vita developer Double Eleven has signed a PlayStation exclusive development deal with Sony.

Formed by former Rockstar Leeds lead engineers in 2010, the UK studio was recently revealed as the architect behind the technology driving LittleBigPlanet on Vita.

Under the terms of the deal, Double Eleven will work on LittleBigPlanet as well as new titles for Sony platforms.

SCE Worldwide Studios Europe senior vice president Michael Denny said: "Double Eleven are one of the most exciting developers to emerge onto the development scene in recent years, their technical expertise makes them a great fit for LittleBigPlanet on PS Vita and we've very pleased with the progress the team have made on this hugely anticipated title.

"For us to become strong partners with Sony at such a crucial stage in our own development underlines the unswerving commitment we have made to the quality of our production," said Double Eleven CEO Lee Hutchinson. "We look forward to a truly exciting new phase in our own development, with the absolute intention to become a world-class studio."

Yoshida: Vita’s price point of $249 was the goal from “the very, very beginning”

Sony’s president of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, has said the firm came up with the $249/€249 price point for Vita after the firm’s “difficult experience,” with PS3′s original cost to consumers which caused major backlash.

Yoshida, speaking in an interview with GI.biz, said the firm didn’t want a repeat performance with Vita, so it started developing the product at the set price point from the very start.
“Going through the PlayStation 3 experience was difficult for all of us involved,” he explained, “so when we started working on PS Vita three years ago we set goals, and one of those goals was to hit $249 price point, €249 from the very, very beginning. That was springtime 2008.

“At the same time using the advanced graphics, the larger screen, the network options – these were things we wanted to do so we spent a year looking at every single option in terms of hardware devices that will become available in the 2011 period. The hardware group provided us with some components and prototype hardware for our studio teams to use so we could experiment with our prototypes, such as what if we have a touch panel behind the unit. Initially we thought that was strange, but the BigBig team in the UK came up with the Little Deviants prototype and we realised it would work.

“We showed it to the SCEI guys and the hardware guys were convinced by it. That was how we looked at every single option, with always in mind our budget in terms of cost is to hit the $249 price, which is a totally different approach to the PlayStation 3.

“In terms of hardware development it was between 2-3 years and I don’t think we spent any longer than we had before. The difference was the timing of the Worldwide Studios and game teams involvement in the process. We were involved in Vita development before we made the decision on what kind of CPU and GPU to use. That’s usually the very first thing because of the semi conductor development cycle, it’s the first thing we had to decide on.

“That shows how long we’ve been involved and so we were there all the time when the SCEI hardware guys got hands on the components. In the past, up to the PS3, they kept everything behind closed doors, even from ourselves, and making decisions based on their inspirations from a mostly hardware engineering standpoint.”

Vita to be Sony’s “easiest” and best supported platform for devs

Sony has learned from its experience with the development-unfriendly PlayStation 3, and made the Vita as accessible as possible.

“When it comes to ease of development, the Vita is a platform with which we’ve been very mindful of that,” SCE Worldwide Studios senior VP Michael Denny told Develop.

“In terms of smoothing the development process, certainly what the Vita offers is close to that of the PSP, and with some of the help we’re giving to developers, I would say it is the easiest and most well supported platform yet.”

Colleague Richard Lee concurred, adding that there has “never been anything like this on a PlayStation platform”.

“We made every effort to make it as easy as possible,” he said.

“I think we took the experiences from PS3, and decided that we wanted to go out there with a great developer environment that is compatible with the third party tools that developers normally use.”
Developer support is a hot issue for Sony because its flagship platform, the PS3, is notoriously difficult to develop for, with most studios relying on third-party technologies to build games for the system.

“It had very, very high potential and peak performance, but programming for the PlayStation platforms was a huge challenge for game developers,” SCE Worldwide Studios lead Shuhei Yoshida commented.

“In a sense, Kutaragi was enjoying challenging game developers. He was especially challenging the top programmers in the world to come up with something amazing to make use of the performance of each iteration of the PlayStation platforms.

“That was very good – it was great – for the teams with engineers who liked the challenge, but the world has now changed, and today there is a much larger community of developers.

“The focus has shifted to be less about getting the most out of the hardware, to be about having a very smooth production process. That’s because now it involves so many more people to make one game.”

Sony Most Valued Brand In Asia

The Sony Corporation is one of the biggest consumer electronics in Asia, beating out others in the same category, like Toshiba, Hitachi, Sharp, and many other world renowned companies. While Sony has had a rather rough time lately, especially in the States, recent events on the eastern hemisphere have not significantly blunted the Sony brand.

Despite the notorious PlayStation Network outage hugely damaging the image of not only PlayStation, but the entire Sony name, the Asian market is still putting great value in the Japanese brand. According to an independent survey done by TNS, a global market research firm, not just in China and Hong Kong, but in all of Asia, Sony was the most valued brand. The Campaign 2011 Top 1000 Asia-Pacific Brands survey polled 3,300 people and were unsurprised with the results of the survey given the everyday use nature of Sony products. According to Atifa Hargrave-Silk, the sponsor for the survey:

I think we often find it’s the everyday brands that come out on top in this survey. It’s not a reflection of Asia’s love affair with luxury brands.

The director of TNS sang a similar tune in regards to where mass-market and luxury consumer products usually ranked on the charts of their studies. According to Thomas Isaac:

Luxury brands, by definition are not mass market products. In most Asian countries, the man on the street has not heard of Louis Vuitton, but he has heard of Sony.

Coincidentally, this news comes out as soon as reports of the PlayStation Network’s return in Japan made headlines – which can only point to an evermore positive position for the Japanese corporation moving forward. In regards to the PlayStation brand under Sony, the PSP is continuing to perform leaps and bounds over its competition just before the eventful release of the PlayStation Vita.
Where does Sony rank in your personal value of brands? Tell us in the comments section below.

Sony “quietly testing” new PSN redesign

Sony is currently “quietly testing” a new PSN redesign, according to a new report.

RegHardware said that the new look will “transform the online environment into a more image-driven layout along the lines of Xbox Live and Steam.”

It says that both the PS Store in games and movies are going to take an IMDB-like database approach.
A new deals of the week section is also apparently in the pipeline.

Looks like that blueish colour’s going out the window as well. RegHardware says it’ll be replaced by “ultra bright colours on a black background.”

All of this follows PSN’s downtime back in April due to an external intrusion.

Hirai becomes SCEI chairman, House takes over as president

Sony’s just announced the appointment of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe boss Andrew House as the president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment International.

Previous CEO and president Kaz Hirai has stepped aside from House’s new roles to become chairman. Current chairman Akira Sato will retire from the role effective as of August 31.

PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi has stood down as honorary chairman from SCEI as of yesterday, but will maintain a senior technology advisory role within Sony.

SCEE executive vice-president and co-CEO Jim Ryan will take over House’s role. These roles are affective as of September 1.

Develop to host PlayStation Vita talk

Develop organisers have announced this morning that Sony will be holding a talk at the event on PlayStation Vita. The talk, which will take place on July 20, will see head of developer services Kish Hirani and Sony’s Neil Brown give the first public talk of the handheld in the UK since its NGP-filled unveil in January and Vita unwrapping at E3 earlier this month.

Develop takes place between July 19-21 in Brighton.

Sony gets a new developer, works specifically for Vita

Fresh from its earlier House-Hirai megaton this morning, Sony’s announced that its signed Barcelona-based developer Novarama Technology to an exclusivity deal, meaning the studio will solely work exclusively for SCEE and Sony platforms.

Novarama’s currently making Reality Fighters for Vita, having released Invizimals for PSP. RF will also be a launch title for Vita, Sony confirmed in the press release.

Norvama will mainly work on future Vita games as they grow in the bussiness, but in time they could start projects on other Sony platforms aswell.

No external UMD reader for PlayStation Vita

We already knew that Sony will abandon there UMD-format for the PlayStation Vita, but allot of PSP owners were still wondering if Sony would bring out some kind of external UMD-reader so they could play there PSP-games on the Vita. Bad news for them.

Sony thinks an external UMD-reader would just take away to much space for there new handheld, but they are still looking for way's to let players with UMD-based games get those on the PlayStation Vita aswell. Lets all hope we can get the games thro the PSN-store (for free) if we already have them on disc.

Bigger focus on Vita games compared to the PSP launch

Speaking before E3, Sony's head of WorldWide Studios Suhei Yoshida told us that the company's decision to concentrate much more on PS3 software than PSP titles was a "mistake" and hurt the handheld.

However, it is not a mistake that Sony will make twice.

"We are doing about the same number of titles [on Vita as on PS3] so that means a lot," "One of the things we didn't do to well to support PSP was that right after PSP came out we moved on to working on the PS3 launch titles. "So we shifted too much resource out of PSP so after a couple of years the PSP support when quickly down."

They tried making up for the lost time a phew years ago, but Sony thinks it was already to late by then. This time around, Sony will balance PS3 and Vita production evenly and bring out allot of triple-A games for both systems.