History of PlayStation Vita. Part 1. PСH-1000

Console Development

Although the development of the successor to the iconic PlayStation Portable started in May 2008, this story began much earlier. On November 30, 2006, Ken Kutaragi handed over his position as President of SCE to Kazuo Hirai. This administrative decision literally changed everything.

Kazuo Hirai on the left, Ken Kutaragi on the right

In the distant past, when Sony and Nintendo designed their consoles, they did it from scratch. At most, they could take the ARM processor architecture and build their own unique processor based on it.

But console developers always faced a difficult choice: get a unique processor that is 100% suitable for the console but makes game development more difficult, or simplify life for developers but weaken the console.

When Kazuo Hirai replaced Ken Kutaragi, Sony's philosophy of hardware design completely changed. Only the concept remained the same – the new portable console had to be on par with the PlayStation 3 and have additional controls (a second stick).

Instead of trying to design their own unique processor for PS Vita, Sony's developers took ready-made solutions: a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 (the main processor of the console) and PowerVR SGX543 (the graphics processor) and slightly modified them. "Surprisingly," these were the same chips used in iPads of that time.

Interestingly, Sony really wanted to add multitasking to the new console and decided to completely separate the system and games. So, three processor cores worked exclusively for the game, and the last core always supported the system. For example, you could minimize the game at any time and open something else (though you couldn't open two games at once). When you exited the game, it was simply minimized. To close it completely, you had to pull the corner.

But the most significant change was the PS Vita's screen. Since the PSP era, a large screen had been the main feature of the console, so Sony's developers decided to radically redesign and improve it. Thus, the PlayStation Vita got a very cool five-inch OLED screen with a resolution of 960 by 544 pixels and the ability to display 17 million colors.

PSP on top, PS Vita on the bottom

This created the foundation of the console: a powerful processor and graphics card, a great screen, and a second stick. But then the "new approach" influenced the console's development.

New Approach

If before Sony simply rolled out ready-made solutions and told game creators – here's the console, make games. This time, they literally forced game creators to participate in the development of PS Vita.

On September 14, 2005, Sony Computer Entertainment announced the creation of SCE Worldwide Studios. This was a company that united all game development studios owned by SCE. And Shuhei Yoshida became the head of the new company.

When Kazuo Hirai gave the command to involve game creators as much as possible in the development of PS Vita, Sony engineers faced the question: how to do this? Imagine you came up with a new feature for the portable console, but who should test it? Sony is not a small company with ten employees, but a huge corporation spread all over the world.

Shuhei Yoshida literally became the link between the Japanese office with engineers and the SCE WWS divisions, which tested the new console and suggested ideas.

This bore fruit, for example, many doubted that the rear touch screen in PS Vita would be needed by anyone. But the BigBig team from the UK developed a prototype of the game Little Deviants, which made very good use of the rear touch panel of PS Vita. Then everyone realized that this feature could be kept.

It seems that this instruction from Kazuo Hirai broke the dam. Obviously, the laurels of Nintendo with their creative approach to consoles did not give Sony developers peace. Everyone wanted to add something of their own to PS Vita. As a result, the new portable console got: a three-axis electronic compass, a three-axis gyroscope, an accelerometer, a front and rear touch screen, 3G and GPS, a microphone, front and rear cameras (for augmented reality).

However, most games didn't need this at all. Often, only the second stick was used in games, which was really needed.

The funniest thing is that the approach was new, but some solutions remained old. So, the memory card for the console was completely proprietary.

And as usual, this played a cruel joke on Sony, firstly, many didn't have enough memory cards at the start of sales, and secondly, card readers for them simply didn't exist.

Interestingly, because of this "new approach," the design of the console itself had to be radically changed.

Console Design

As early as 2008, rumors appeared that Sony was working on PSP 2. And in 2010, an interesting leak occurred. The gaming blog VG247 received photos of the alleged PS Vita prototype:

But in 2010, these were two photos of terrible quality, and the final device looked completely different. So it wasn't clear if it was true or not. But in the end, everything was confirmed. In 2019, someone put this prototype up for sale on eBay. The seller wanted $19,999 for it.

This prototype didn't have a battery, worked only from the network, and used a regular SD memory card.

Initially, Sony developers wanted to release the new console in a slider form factor (like PSP GO), but in the end, they abandoned this idea. The problem was precisely the "new approach." Using a universal, rather than unique, processor and graphics card led to a significant increase in heat generation. Sony engineers couldn't reduce it with such a form factor. After all, essentially, all the chips were in one half, and there was limited space there.

That's why, when the console was first announced, it looked completely different.

Console Announcement

On January 27, 2011, at the PlayStation Meeting 2011 event, the new console was premiered.

Kazuo Hirai took the stage and presented Sony's new portable console.

Interestingly, the console's name had not yet been approved at that time. It was presented as "Next Generation Portable."

Note that at the bottom, it doesn't say the familiar PS Vita, but simply PlayStation. The console was presented in two colors: white and black.

Kazuo shared some details: the console had its own format for cartridges (essentially a memory card but in the form of a cartridge), front and rear touch panels, and a second analog stick was added.

Kazuo Hirai announced that the console would be compatible with Android. And many games could be launched on phones.

And at the press conference dedicated to the E3 2011 exhibition, it was announced that the new console would be called PS Vita.

At the TGS 2011 exhibition, PS Vita was presented in different colors.

It was also announced that it would go on sale on December 17, 2011.

Console Release

It's no longer surprising that on the day of the new console's sales launch, huge lines form. But this time, everything started on October 15, 2011, the day pre-orders for the new console began.

By 5:30 AM, a huge line had already formed, which eventually grew to 500 people.

At 6 AM, it started raining.

Only those at the front of the line were lucky. They were under a canopy.

At 6:45 AM, employees appeared, explaining how to fill out the pre-order form.

A red form was given to those who wanted to get the 3G version of the console, and a black form for the regular version.

It was truly amazing. Huge lines formed just to pre-order the PS Vita. What would happen on the day of the sales launch!?

The main events for the PS Vita sales launch took place on December 17, 2011, in Tokyo at the Shibuya Tsutaya store.

Andrew House (Chairman of SIE) and Kazuo Hirai arrived there. They launched the countdown to the sales start.

And the first lucky person received their console personally from Andrew House.

The largest line was recorded in front of the Yodobashi Akiba store.

There were about one and a half thousand people there!