Sony: Vita Was Designed By Game Devs, For Game Devs

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The PlayStation Vita has grabbed plenty of headlines this month; Sony's new portable recently launched in Japan and gamers turned out in droves to snag the snazzy handheld.

And if you thought you knew everything about the Vita, visit the PlayStation Blog, where you can find five interesting factoids, which are well worth a read.

One of our favorites is the fact that the Vita was actually designed by the same guy who designed the original Sony Walkman. Takashi Sogabe, a 27-year Sony veteran, was head of the team "responsible for the look and feel of PlayStation Vita." Sogabe said they looked at a bunch of different designs (like one with a sliding back like the PSP Go and a clam-shell) and originally, the exterior was going to be entirely metallic. But the antennae required for Wi-Fi and 3G made this impossible.  ...all metallica might've been sweet, though.

That's very cool but from a more practical standpoint, it's very important to have a machine that game developers understand and actually wantto make games for; hence, the third fact- "PlayStation Vita is designed by game developers, for game developers." Said President of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida:

"When Kaz Hirai took over management of SCEI. he brought in the approach of fully integrating software and hardware development. Before that, we made brilliant hardware, no question of that, but our hardware team didn’t have such a good understanding of what game developers need or what features might be useful.

[With PS Vita] we [Worldwide Studios] were there right at the beginning to express our thoughts and reactions to the hardware that was being proposed. We were there at every stage and with every prototype, and we developed game builds to prove and, sometimes, disprove how each new feature was going to make for a great game system."

And that right there is what should give the Vita plenty of punching power right off the bat. No more of this struggling to come to terms with the new hardware; no two or three years of drastic improvement before games start to reflect the unit's power. Obviously, we expect someimprovement over the years but the point is, developers should be comfortable with this thing very soon...or maybe immediately.

Great news for gamers.

http://www.psxextreme.com/vita-news/51.html

Very smart decision of Sony. The vita does everything i wanted the PSP to be.