Sony Executive Kaz Hirai has confirmed that the PS Vita will NOT be launching in the UK on October 28th, or even this year.
Hirai confirmed to Eurogamer that the PS Vita will launch in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan very close to the end of the year, but Europe and the US will be forced to wait until ‘early next year’.
This confirmation pretty much blows out the possibility of an October 28th UK release as we thought when an internal memo from Blockbuster recently leaked online.
We expected that the PS Vita would launch primarily in Sony’s homeland of Japan before elsewhere, but we had also anticipated a pre-Christmas 2011 release for the handheld console.
Hirai confirmed that Sony are not delaying the product’s release, but are ensuring that the product is market ready and the best it can possibly be. He was also keen to make a point that the price of the PS Vita would not be cut prior to or after its release – as rival company Nintendo have recently done to combat poor sales of the 3DS.
“We packed so much into the device and made it very affordable,” Hirai said. “There is no need to lower the price just because somebody else that happens to be in the video game business decided that they were going to lower their price.”
We’re yet to find out just how much the PS Vita will cost in the UK, Europe or US, though we expect the price to be competitive with the 3DS in mind.
The PS Vita will be able to sync with the Playstation 3 console to act as a controller or add-on, we recently learnt. Read more on that story here.
Has Sony left it too late or will the PS Vita still pack a punch when it goes on sale? Let us know what you think!
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Source: Eurogamer