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An intimate chat with Sony PlayStation's Shuhei Yoshida
Sony PlayStation's Shuhei Yoshida is the best kind of corporate executive. The Worldwide Studios head is affable, open-minded and, best of all, he embraces competition from rivals. I'm speaking, of course, about Microsoft's recent move to partner up with every other company working on virtual reality that's not Sony, of which Shu (as he's commonly referred to) says is no concern. At E3 this week, I had a chance to sit down with the friendly face of PlayStation to pick his brain about making Morpheus more social, embracing crowdfunding to revive cult classics and just what is going on with The Last Guardian.
New Vita ditches proprietary charging cables for micro USB
The next model of the Vita handheld (officially dubbed model 2000), will not be tethered to Sony's own power cords. Instead, the handheld gaming machine will be able to pull down both power and data through the same micro USB cables currently in use by many portable devices. "You'll be happy to know PS Vita 2000 can charge with a smartphone charger with micro USB," wrote Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide Studios in a tweet translated by CVG. Alongside the message Yoshida posted the above image which clearly shows the handhelds' micro USB port. This new version of the Vita was initially announced at this year's Tokyo Game Show. As we reported at that time, the 2000 model Vita is both lighter and slimmer than the models currently found on retail shelves. The next Vita is currently slated to hit Japan on October 10. As of now there is no word on when it might find its way to the West.
Sony rules out PS Vita price cut in 2012, works to lower the price later
It's time to get realistic about the prospects of a PlayStation Vita price drop. Sony Worldwide Studios' head Shuhei Yoshida dampened the fires of speculation at GamesCom this week by telling Eurogamer that it was simply "too early" to slash the price on the gaming handheld -- it was only just launched this year for every active region beyond Japan, after all. That's not to say Sony is determined to keep the PS Vita at $249 forever. Much like what it did for the PS3, the company is working to bring down the price by streamlining part costs. The cuts might be necessary given the mismatch between the warm reception to the quad-core, OLED-packing hardware and the actual sales; Sony would "like to see more uptake" than what's been seen to date, according to Yoshida. In the meantime, we'll have to be content with bundles like the European LittleBigPlanet combo if we want to eke out a little more value at the game store counter.
