Sony announces new PlayStation Vita details

It’s been a big day for Sony at their Gamescon press conference. Today, they announced that effective immediately, the PlayStation 3 is priced $50 cheaper and that a Wi-Fi-less PlayStation Portable will be released in Europe.

But more compelling is new information on their next handheld, the PlayStation Vita.

For starters, in addition to already announced launch titles like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, ModNation Racers and LittleBigPlanet, several new games have been confirmed for the system:

Release: Late 2011 – Early 2012 Price: $250 – $300 Features: Dual Analog Sticks 5-Inch OLED Touchscreen Wi-Fi (optional 3G) Bluetooth SIXAXIS Motion-Sensing Track Pad PS3 Integration Front & Rear Cameras Augmented Reality

• New Assassin’s Creed Title
• Escape Plan
• FIFA 12
• Lumines
• Resistance: Burning Skies

It’s unclear if they’ll be available at launch, but they’re still something to look forward to.

Sony also announced that all PS Vita games will be downloadable–no UMDs here. Certain games will also be released in stores on NVG cards, flash cards that are similar in physical size to SD cards or Nintendo 3DS cartridges. The rest will be download-only, but while that business model didn’t appear to work for the PSPgo, the PlayStation Store is growing with more and more titles and users are adapting to digital copies of games.

If you’d like to wait for a price drop on those brand new titles, the PS Vita is backwards compatible with downloadable PSP titles, PlayStation minis and PSOne Classics.

As well, the PS Vita will allow you to connect to such social networks and media as Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Foursquare via Wi-Fi and 3G.

The PS Vita releases in Asia late this year and in Europe and North America early next year. It retails for $250 (Wi-Fi) and $300 (Wi-Fi + 3G).

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