US and European gamers who were hoping to get a PS Vita as a holiday present this year are going to be disappointed. Sony has confirmed, via MSN, that its second generation portable game console won’t be released by the end of 2011 in those territories as originally planned. The PS Vita is still scheduled to be launched in Sony’s home country of Japan by the end of the year. Speaking to reporters this week, Sony’s Executive Vice President Kazuo Hirai said that the company wanted to make sure that the PS Vita had a solid game lineup to match the launch of the console.
The PS Vita was first announced by Sony under its code name NGP (Next Generation Portable) in early 2011, and got its official name at E3 2011 last June (although the Vita name was leaked out before E3). The console will have a quad-core processor, a five-inch touch screen, a number of different game control options, and features such as being able to store saved game points to the cloud. You will then be able to play on a Playstation 3 version of the same game with your PS Vita save games.
Sony has announced that the WiFi only version of the PS Vita will be sold for $249.99, and the WiFi-3G version will be sold for $299.99. Recently, Nintendo announced that it will slash the price of its recently launched Nintendo 3DS console from $249 to $179 on August 12. Nintendo has admitted that sales of the 3DS have not been as high as anticipated. Today, Sony’s Hirai dismissed the idea that it might lower the price of the PS Vita to match that of the 3DS, saying, “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.”