
The Vita is Sony’s newest handheld gaming program, and in lots of techniques it represents Sony’s answer towards the Nintendo 3DS. Following on the heels of Sony’s earlier PSP and PSP Go mobile gaming systems, the Vita was announced last year and really came out in Japan last December.
It really is shiny and new, is not that sufficient? No? The Vita’s biggest selling point is arguably the 5-inch 16:9 OLED multi-touch screen. That may well not sound significant, but for a portable device it really is positively big. The screen’s packing some impressive specs also, having a 960-by-544 pixel resolution that displays up to 16 million colors. I went hands-on with all the Vita earlier this week and also the screen looks bright, clear, and excellent for video.
Even so, videos aren’t the only thing that could appear fantastic on the Vita. The system’s graphics are powered by an ARM Cortex A9 processor, a potent quad-core CPU capable of rendering some actually impressive graphics on a mobile platform. Sony’s taken to comparing the Vita’s graphics with their PlayStation 3 console, and when the graphics aren’t quite at PS3 levels, the Vita absolutely shows off some of the most impressive graphical effects I’ve ever noticed on a mobile device.
Sony’s also thrown in a lot of other new bells and whistles that open up lots of exciting gaming possibilities. The Vita has front and rear facing cameras, a GPS sensor to generate it place aware, Wi-Fi capabilities (as well as 3G on the extra expensive models) and an accelerometer for motion control. With all these selections the Vita is potentially capable of supporting practically any gameplay mechanic game developers are currently utilizing, including tablet-style touch-based games and Nintendo Wii-style motion controls. The apparent exception is the lack of a 3D display, but, offered the literal and figurative headaches the Nintendo 3DS’ screen has caused some players, it may possibly happen to be a intelligent choice to leave that feature out.