The PlayStation Vita (プレイステーション・ヴィータPureisutēshon Vīta) is a handheld game console by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the successor to the PlayStation Portable as part of the PlayStation brand of gaming devices. It was released in Japan andparts of Asia on December 17, 2011 and is expected to be released in Europe, Australia,and Latin and North America on February 22, 2012.
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 a4 core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor and a 4 core SGX543MP4+ graphics processingunit, as well as LiveArea software as its main user interface, which succeeds the XrossMediaBar.
The device is fully backwards-compatible with PlayStation Portable games digitally released on the PlayStation Network via the PlayStation Store.However, PS One Classics and TurboGrafx-16 titles were not compatible at the time of the primary publicrelease in Japan.The Vita's dual analog sticks will be supported on selected PSP games. The graphics for PSP releases will be up-scaled, with a smoothing filter to reducepixelation.