PlayStation Vita gets a launch date for North America (and more)

Sony has finally announced the launch date for their new handheld gaming system named, PlayStation Vita. The Japanese launch date was announced back in September to be December 17th but no date was announced at that time for other territories. Tuesday, Sony announced that the system would launch in North America, Canada, Europe, and Latin America on February 22, 2012.

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The announcement of the handheld's launch date came during the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. This date isn't particularly surprising. When the system was announced Sony was very transparent that it would launch in Japan before year end but not other territories. It was very unlikely that Sony would have waited past the first quarter of 2012 to get the new system into everyone's hands.

The price points for the Vita will remain as previously announced, WiFi only will run you $250 while adding 3G (powered by AT&T) will push the price up to $300. This seems more than reasonable considering the feature set of the device includes a 5-inch OLED touchscreen, quad-core processors, dual analog sticks, dual cameras and a rear touch panel.

The question is how successful will this device be? Nintendo has already experienced difficulty selling their 3DS as quickly as they wanted to and that device originally had a $250 price point. The company had to quickly cut that price, just 6 months after release, to $170 to spur sales. The fact of the matter is that the portable market is very different right now. So many people are using smart phones and tablets to scratch their portable gaming itch that no one has an interest in carrying around yet another dedicated device.

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The other issue is the reports of terrible battery life on the Vita. With WiFi turned off and the screen brightness way down the device tops out at 3-5 hours. That isn't exactly mind blowing for a device that is billed as a portable solution.

It would be nice to see the Vita succeed especially given the impressive specs to price ratio the device has but I just don't see that happening in this new market. The question is will Sony adjust if this device fails or will they continue to beat their heads against something that phones and tablets are quickly pushing into extinction? Does Sony even see those devices as competitors or are they just trying to hang with Nintendo? Time will tell how this all shakes out.

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