PS Vita Gets Detailed at Sony’s E3 Keynote

As expected, Sony finally revealed that the NGP will now be known as the PS Vita at its E3 keynote yesterday. In addition to the details previously revealed, Kaz Hirai discussed a new feature for the handheld called “Party” which will allow players to use voice chat while playing different games at the same time. Although being met with some mixed emotions, Sony also revealed that the Vita will have both Wi-Fi and 3G functionality, with AT&T being the official wireless carrier. The Wi-Fi model will retail for $249 and the 3G model will go for $299. Both models will launch by the end of 2011.

Several PS Vita games were demonstrated on stage during the conference as well as a montage of upcoming content.

One of the first games shown was Uncharted: Golden Abyss. During the demonstration, John Garvin and Chris Reece of Bend Studios showed off the ability to switch between traditional controls and the new touch controls.

The next game to be demoed was a cross over of Street Fighter X Tekken built for the PS Vita. Yoshinori Ono took the stage to show off the current build of the game and reveal that Cole McGrath of inFAMOUS fame will be a special character for the Vita and PS3 versions.

Ruin, PlayStation Vita’s “social-action-RPG” was demoed by Jeff Litchford of Idle Minds and showed off the Vita’s “cloud” save technology. This new save system will allow you to save your game on the handheld, then pick up and continue playing almost instantly on a larger screen television attached to a PS3.

A Vita version of ModNation Racers was also demonstrated on stage. This version will feature touchscreen creation controls and all of the content created by users for the PS3 version of the game will be available for the Vita version.