It may be Friday, potentially the best day of the week, but we’ve some bad news for hopeful PlayStation fans outside of Japan: Sony is keeping the rather awesome PS Vita TV device it recently revealed in its homeland only.
Yes, the dinky little white box which streams games from your PS Vita and even your PS4 onto a lovely big HD telly will be staying away from the UK and the US for the foreseeable future. It’ll be launching in Japan on November 14th but we can’t recommend expecting it to go abroad any time soon after that.
Speaking with Tech-On recently, Sony’s PlayStation chief Andrew House confirmed that the device will be hitting Japan first, with the key reason being that there’s no big love for streaming services there. Whereas the western world loves Netflix, LoveFilm and Hulu, Japan is a little far behind in that respect, and Sony hopes to exploit that as soon as possible with the PS Vita TV and its very own TV and movie streaming service.
The device allows PS Vita owners to pop a game card into the slot on the front and play using a standard DualShock 3 controller on a HD screen of their choice. It also offers original PlayStation and PSP titles as digital downloads from the PlayStation Store, and in theory will be capable of playing PS4 titles via the Remote Play system in the near future. House claimed that at present there will be over 1,300 games playable on the PS Vita TV.
He also confirmed that multiple DualShock 3 controllers can be hooked up in order to play Vita games multiplayer style on a bigger screen. Going forward House says that DualShock 4 controllers from the PS4 will also become compatible.
At under £100 (by direct conversion) for a PS Vita TV, 8GB memory card and DualShock 3 controller, Sony’s latest gizmo is a very tantalising prospect. We’ll just have to keep all of our fingers crossed very tightly for a worldwide release.
To learn more about the PS Vita TV and what it can do, hit our previous launch article right here.