Sony Computer Entertainment’s American CEO, Jack Tretton, made the announcement at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco Tuesday. “I can’t wait for you to experience this revolutionary handheld system,” Tretton gushed in a blog post. The price tag? $249.
So how revolutionary is it? On the surface, it looks like an upgraded version of Sony’s last and largely disappointing handheld gaming system, the PSP. But Mashable got its hands on the Vita back in June and found it to be a lot more than it appears — the screen resolution and touchscreen controls were impressive, the analog joysticks handled well, the front- and back-facing cameras made for interesting augmented reality gameplay, and overall it seemed a more powerful system than the Nintendo DS.
But will the $249 price tag fly, in an era where millions of people are playing games on their smartphones? We’ll find out in February.
