Sony’s next-gen PlayStation handheld launches in Japan this weekend.

The PS Vita makes its worldwide debut in Japan on Saturday 17 December following a long-running round of promotion in both the East and West.

NowGamer already has a comprehensive guide on everything you need to know about the device.

PlayStation Vita launches in Japan in two Crystal Black flavours – the Wi-Fi model (PCH-1000 ZA01) and 3G/Wi-Fi Model (PCH-1100 AA01 & PCH-1100 AB01), costing ¥24,980 and ¥29,980 respectively.

Unlimited tariffs will be available for PS Vita 3G owners.

The PS Vita box includes:

- PlayStation Vita Wi-Fi Model x1
- USB cable x1
- AC adapter x1
- Power cord x1
- Instructions x1
- Sim card x1 (3G model only)

Sony has reportedly upped it’s shipment of 500,000 units in Japan to 700,000 units to meet demand.

PS Vita’s release date in the UK is 22 February when it’ll be available for £229.99 and £279.99 for Wi-Fi and 3G models respectively.

PS Vita game packaging will follow Sony’s recent blue trend, in boxes somewhere between PSP packaging and Blu-ray.

Sony recently demonstrated how PS Vita’s cross-play and remote-play features will work with PS3.

The device is reportedly region free, meaning we could see the PS Vita on UK streets before the year is out – it’s unclear if multiple users’ accounts will be accessible on one device though. Most recent reports suggest it will only support one account at any given time.

We’ve asked Sony for confirmation.

Meanwhile, ahead of the European PS Vita release date, numerous game have gone up for pre-order on Amazon.co.uk – most have an RRP of £34.99 – check out the full availability list below:

Shinobido 2 £33.67
Touch My Katamari £30.07
Ridge Racer £30.07
ModNation Racers: Road Trip £28.37
Everybody’s Golf £36.14
Little Deviants £20.60
Wipeout 2048 £28.37
Reality Fighters £20.60
Uncharted: Golden Abyss £28.37
Unit 13 £28.37
Silent Hill Book Of Memories £35.94

Feature

What Metal Gear Solid 5 Could (and Should) Be

1UP editors ponder the future of Hideo Kojima’s mega-series.

By: 1UP Staff
November 21, 2011

• 

  Jeremy Parish, Editor-in Chief

  You know what I’d like to see for Metal Gear Solid 5? Nothing. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve been following — and a fan of — the Metal Gear games since before the original game came out for NES. I love me some Metal Gear. But at this point, and MGS4 will back me up on this, the series just has too much baggage. Why not just start over with a clean slate and a new series and let Kojima and his folks work their magic without having to worry about an insanely convoluted backstory that was never meant to be concluded? Oh, right… money.

  Fine. If Kojima has to go ahead with a fifth chapter, I only see two ways for it to work. One, jump way far into the future and leave behind the legacy cast. Maybe make the game about Olga’s kid Sunny, all grown up into an idiot savant secret agent who sings about eggs while she snaps necks, but leave everyone else behind. Alternately, let’s take the series way into the past and focus on The Boss (aka The Joy) and her work with Cobra Unit in World War II. Or, hell, stop the flirting and cockteasing and just let Metal Gear make out with Assassin’s Creed already. Find some way to combine the two series’ ridiculous story lines into one. (Suggestion: The Apple is nanomachines!)

  Whatever the case, Metal Gear Solid 5 shouldn’t be about the Snakes. Not Solid Snake, not Liquid Snake, not Naked Snake, and definitely not Solidus. Their story is done. The Patriots’ story is done. Here’s an idea, though: Why not get back to basics and make a Metal Gear that’s about, you know, Metal Gear? The series’ big deal used to be the mad threat represented by a compact, self-contained nuclear delivery system. Before the AIs named after dead presidents and social manipulation and impossible continuity, Metal Gear was about a simple deadly threat. I’d love to see that kind of clarity of purpose in the series again.

• 

  Bob Mackey, Features Admiral

  If you’d like to see the direction the Metal Gear Solid series should go, look no further than Peace Walker; though the game’s admittedly built with on-the-go play in mind, it managed to shake off most of the baggage that clung to the series for so long. Simplified controls, a dialed-back story, a nearly bottomless toy box full of weapons and gadgets, and several multi-layered RPG systems built for endless tinkering — all of these elements brought Metal Gear far above the fan-pandering torture that nearly sunk Solid 4. Given that MGS4 tied up every loose end (and turned Solid Snake into a human Hot Pocket), the series has an unprecedented amount of breathing room; and since the Metal Gear timeline stretches across 50 years, Kojima and his team now have the ability to dip in and out of this history at their leisure. So why shouldn’t they?

  So, where could Metal Gear Solid go with its fifth official installment? Honestly, it’d be fantastic to see remakes of the original two Metal Gears, even if Kojima repurposed a great deal of these games’ content for the original Solid. But instead of putting the spotlight on Snake, why can’t the Metal Gear team instead show us the story of Outer Heaven through the eyes of Big Boss himself? It’d be the perfect send-off to a character they’ve been progressively developing since Metal Gear Solid 3, not to mention a fine opportunity for Metal Gear fans to experience a plotline currently trapped behind a thick mesh of outdated mechanics and primitive storytelling.

• 

Even as our consumer rights are slowly whittled away by binding arbitration clauses, draconian DRM, and “online passes,” we gamers still remain an awfully spoiled lot. And if you don’t believe me, here’s a stunning example: the asking price of the original NES Metal Gear in 1988? 50 American dollars. The cost of a fully remastered bundle containing Metal Gear Solid 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (not to mention bonus remakes of the original MSX Metal Gears 1 and 2), purchased in 2011? 50 American dollars. As a pure value proposition, that’s nearly impossible to beat; and, given the amount of finely crafted video game content contained in this little package, it’s unlikely that you’ll find a better disc to grace the system of your choice — though it helps to be on board with the polarizing quirks of the Metal Gear series.

As a disclaimer, I feel it necessary to admit I’m a fan of most things Metal Gear, though it’s equally important to inform you that I haven’t let fanboyism shield me from its many flaws. Regardless of its various missteps, though, Metal Gear remains one of the few gaming franchises that exists solely as an auteurist expression, something that’s becoming increasingly rare in these design-by-committee days of game development. That said, either you jive with Hideo Kojima’s unique brand of lunacy, or you don’t; and no amount of high-def polish is going to change your mind. While the Peace Walker portion of this collection has been granted a much-needed overhaul to controls and online play, parts 2 and 3 are simply prettier — and these were very pretty games to begin with. Many would argue this collection provides the perfect opportunity to revamp the odd controls of Solids 2 and 3 (which were idiosyncratic at the time), but you only have to look at how Silicon Knights’ attempt to do just this in The Twin Snakes resulted in a horribly broken game — and besides, it’s highly unlikely that Hideo Kojima would allow Bluepoint Games to alter even a byte of his legacy.

Starting later this month, you’ll have to stop sharing content with others and/or become more selective about which PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Portable systems have access to your downloadable game content.

In an announcement on the PlayStation Blog today, Sony announced plans to make game content accessible on only two activated PS3 or PSP systems at any one time. Should you download the game on two systems and want to bring it to a third, you’ll have to deactivate one of the first two before doing so.

Toshihiro Kondo, president of Nihon Falcom, spoke about the history of his company to Japan’s Famitsu magazine a few weeks back. He’s currently heading a company that, after a lull, is going from strength to strength — its latest PSP RPG, The Legend of Heroes: Ao no Kiseki, has sold nearly a quarter million copies in Japan, making it one of the most successful titles for Japan’s oldest RPG company in years.

In the very beginning, though — all the way back in 1981 — Falcom consisted entirely of Masayuki Kato, a computer engineer who became enraptured with the first personal computers that hit stores in the 1970s. “I’m one of the rare people in this industry who came here from a ‘normal’ job,” he told Famitsu this week. “After college I worked for a decade or so as a computer technician at an automaker. I was stationed overseas at Bangkok when I touched an Apple II computer for the first time, and it was just a massive sort of culture shock to me — I thought to myself ‘What have I been doing with myself all this time?’ So I bought one and started messing with it, and compared to the large-scale computers we had at work, it really seemed like they were more suited for entertainment purposes. I had tons of fun playing games on it, typing in the programs they printed in magazines and playing them with my son. He would keep saying to me ‘Dad, can you have it so I have more bullets?’ or ‘Can you make that bad guy stop showing up?’, and in the midst of modifying programs, I learned how to make my own games.”

It won’t be until early 2012 that Metal Gear fans in Europe are able to get their hands on the upcoming HD Collection.

The high-definition bundle includes several of the games you’d expect — Metal Gear Solid 2, 3, and Peace Walker. Also packed in are the original MSX2 titles Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake thanks to the versions of MGS2 and 3 being based on Substance and Subsistence, respectively. The one notable omission is the original Metal Gear Solid; in Japan a download code for the game is provided, but those in North America and Europe will have to track down a copy of the game without the help of the HD Collection.

If going up to a Japanese game shop and asking for “If I Were Locked in a Room With a Girl, I Might Wind Up Doing…” wasn’t embarrassing enough for you, Spike has just the thing — a new PSP RPG whose name translates to “Please Give Birth to My Child!”

Conception: Ore no Kodomo o Unde kure!, announced this week in the pages of Famitsu magazine, is an anime-styled fantasy RPG with the sort of plot that only anime fans might truly appreciate. It starts Itsuki Yuge, a shiftless, unmotivated high-school kid who, with his pregnant cousin Mahiru, is thrown into the world of Granvania and charged with saving this realm from a mysterious spreading miasma. Only the offspring between the chosen one (i.e. Itsuki) and one of the divine maidens of the zodiac can fend off this menace, and so Itsuki has to…well, you know.

A quick look at the highlights among the games coming out in Japan this coming week, courtesy the review pages of Famitsu magazine:

- Final Fantasy Type-0 (10/9/10/10, 39 points): A bit of a surprise here, as the PSP FFXIII spinoff (one that hasn’t gotten a ton of hype overseas) just misses out on a perfect score. “The very serious story, which tries to get you crying right from the start, vividly portrays the fact that this is a deep, intense FF experience, something beyond just a side story,” one editor said. “The follow camera works great and the game’s overall a stressless experience. Co-op is novel and very useful, and it’s addictive in how accessible it is.”

Level-5 held its annual Vision press conference in Tokyo last night (Saturday morning in Japan) for nearly two hours. It covered a great variety of games, among them the absolutely gorgeous Ni No Kuni, which was confirmed again to be headed to North America and Europe in 2012, now with Namco Bandai attached as publisher. We learned that Professor Layton has a son who will be starring in Layton Brothers Mystery Room, a reworked version of DS title Mystery Room that is now coming to iOS. The Gundam Age game made an appearance and we heard about how the aim is to make something for a younger audience fans in order to create a new generation of Gundam fans.

In addition to the conference, also taking place this weekend is Level-5 World, a two-day event being held for the first time ever. You can check out our liveblog for a recap of the conference and flip through our gallery to get a look at pictures and video from the ensuing event. Click on any of the photos for a larger view.

“We believe, for some consumers, the time is right, but for other consumers, the time is still not right,” Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida told Edge. “So we believe the time is still not right to go download-only as a platform. Some PS Vita titles, like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, will be close to 4GB in size, which could be too large to download for consumers who do not have a fast broadband connection. Also, some consumers like shopping in retail stores, talking to knowledgeable store clerks, buying and playing games on the spot. We do not want to remove that capability from consumers.”

Fortunately for those who do wish to abandon the need for physical games, Sony has indicated more than once that all Vita retail games will be available as downloads. (There will be some downloadable games that can’t be found at retail, but by and large those should be smaller titles as opposed to something on par with Uncharted.) This is very good news, and it’s nice to see Sony learned from the PSP Go. Those who purchased the device had spent a premium to go digital-only and then were unable to play the entire back catalog of PSP games because many titles were not available on the PlayStation Store. To make matters worse, the lack of sales and competitively-priced content (as compared with what could be found at retail) made owning a Go a less than attractive prospect.