The PlayStation Vita (プレイステーション・ヴィータ Pureisutēshon Vīta?, officially abbreviated PS Vita) is a handheld game console by Sony Computer Entertainment.[14] It is the successor to the PlayStation Portable as part of the PlayStation brand of gaming devices. It was released in Japan and parts of Asia on December 17, 2011[1] and is expected to be released in Europe, Latin and North America on February 22, 2012[4][3] and in Australia on February 23, 2012.[5] A limited edition was released in North America on February 15, 2012 a week earlier than the official launch with the 3G model of the device, the game Little Deviants, a limited edition carry case and a 4GB memory card.[2]
The handheld includes two analog sticks, a 5-inch (130 mm) OLED multi-touch capacitive touchscreen, and supports Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and optional 3G. Internally, the Vita features a 4-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor and a 4-core SGX543MP4+ graphics processing unit, as well as LiveArea software as its main user interface, which succeeds the XrossMediaBar.[8][15]
The device is fully backwards-compatible with PlayStation Portable games digitally released on the PlayStation Network via the PlayStation Store.[16] However, PS One Classics and TurboGrafx-16 titles were not compatible at the time of the primary public release in Japan.[17] The Vita's dual analog sticks will be supported on PSP games[18]. The graphics for PSP releases will be up-scaled, with a smoothing filter to reduce pixelation.[19]