Sony Press Conference E3 2011 – Breakdown – Part 12 – NGP gets a name: PlayStation Vita
Sony’s Executive Vice President, Kazuo Hirai was building up to officially unveiling the Next Generation Portable, or NGP, by explaining how Sony was trying to bring together the two phenomenon of home and portable gaming.
After revealing the, rather cool sounding PlayStation Suite, Hirai announced that more details on the feature would be released in the near future and that it would bring more customers to Sony’s doorstep.
Yet, when Hirai ushered the word’s ‘you’ve taken the PSP (PlayStation Portable) everywhere,’ it could only mean one thing, it was finally time for the NGP to take the stage. He explained that the second iteration in the PSP would allow gamers to break traditional
boundaries and interact in new ways.
While this would have been great if no one knew what he was talking about, it was still quite satisfying in the regards to the level of suspense it created. Hirai went on to confirm what every gaming website had been spreading rumours about: The NGP was
now officially unveiled as the PlayStation Vita.
The applause was loud and Hirai seemed to soak it in, but one could sense that the crowd had now turned its attention to the all important detail: the PSVita’s price.
Hirai was once again playing with the audience, telling them what they already knew with the technical specifications of Sony’s latest portable gaming device. A five inch multi-touch screen, Six Axis, front and rear cameras and two analogue controllers were
all there and it did look very slick in its all black finish.
The PSVita would come in two models; one would be Wi-Fi only, while the other would support Wi-Fi as well as 3G. Both would allow gamers to take part in what Hirai explained was location based and social networking based gaming.
However, Sony was about to get its first groan from the audience when it announced that it had paired up with AT&T to provide its customers with 3G support. Sony claimed it was the fastest mobile broadband network service, yet the crowd seemed to have a
different opinion.
PSVita users would be given free access to over 24,000 AT&T hotspots across the United States and more detailed info on the pricing and carriers for the service in other regions would be announced soon as well.
Hirai seemed to want to get the features and specs of the PSVita out of the way before moving on to the games, as he introduced a Party Feature and a host of other things that, although were impressive, had the crowd itching to find out about the games.
This article is continued in Sony Press Conference E3 2011 – Breakdown – Part 13 – The PlayStation Vita, features and games
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