The PS Vita is just a few weeks away from hitting Japanese shelves. And if you’re still not convinced about whether to shell out £229 for one when it lands here in February, perhaps emerging news about the console’s stunning Remote Play capabilities might change your mind. See, word is that all PS3 games will play nice on the PS Vita, making the handheld an even tastier proposition than before.
What’s that you say? Lower the price and you’ll increase sales? Nintendo heard the message loud and clear when it slashed the price of the 3DS last week. Following the announcement, sales of the portable 3D console plummeted from 31,826 units to just 16,416. Over the past seven days in Japan, Nintendo has managed to sell a staggering 215,000 units.
Good news for retro gaming fans: Sony has announced that it’s planning to bring classic Japanese and US PlayStation One titles to Europe via the PlayStation Network. The decision means that publishers who still own the rights to their PlayStation One games will be able to apply to have them release here provided they’ve been rated.
Sony says the PlayStation One titles will hit the PlayStation Network “as is” which means some might require you to brush up on your Japanese. All the re-released games will run at 60Hz, so you’ll also need a display that can handle that.
The move already looks promising for fans of long-lost JRPGS. Ross McGrath of the Sony PlayStation Store team says he’s already been in contact with Square-Enix about delving into its catalogue.
Sony is asking for suggestions of games you’d like to see at the link below. Tell us too in the comments by clicking the headline and diving in.
Out TBC | £TBC | PlayStation Blog
While Sony has long said that the PS3 will have a 10-year lifespan – which would take us through to 2016 – chatter around the arrival of the PS4 has been picking up recently. Back in May, Sony CFO, Masaru Kato, confirmed that a big chunk of the company’s R&D budget is focused on building the next console.
Now DigiTimes has gone all out with claims that the PS4 will hit production at the end of 2011 in time for a 2012 launch. That would set Sony up for a head-to-head battle with the Nintendo Wii U. And that’s before we even consider the claim that it’ll come with motion control built in…
It looks like the PlayStation Vita won’t be nestled in the pile of presents beneath your Christmas tree. It seems US gamers who’ve ordered a PlayStation Vita from Amazon have been given a release date: December 31 2011.
If that date is final (and it is an “if”), that will mean the next generaton handheld won’t actually be held by most people until January. Sony would miss out on a huge sales opportunity for the PlayStation Vita and leave it open for the Nintendo 3DS to seduce Chrismas shoppers craving a gaming gadget.
Out TBC | £TBC | Sony (via Destructoid)
Straight from the file marked “Barking Mad Plans” comes this tale of Sony considering a PlayStation Move dock for the PSP. A recently uncovered patent, filed back in November 2009, shows a peripheral for the PSP with a built-in camera to use PlayStation Move controllers with the docked device. Do these plans still have any life in them?
We’ve got plenty of juciy competitions running on Electripcig at the moment: as well as a brand new, unreleased BlackBerry PlayBook on offer, we’re giving a PlayStation 3 and a copy of DiRT 3 to one lucky subscriber of our Prime Cuts newsletter. Get yourself in on the draw right now by signing up here, and hurry – you’ve only got until Wednesday before the draw!
Sony PlayStation boss Jack Tretton came out swinging over the weekend in an interview with Fortune, taking aim at the Nintendo 3DS. As you might expect he bigged up Sony’s strengths and skimmed over its weaknesses. While we wait for the Sony NGP to arrive, Tretton took on the Nintendo 3DS…