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Black Friday 2013: PlayStation Vita with four good games for $174.99

2013-11-29T15:11:20-05:00

via cdn1.sbnation.com

Amazon might not be the best place to buy a discounted Nvidia Shield, but today the online retailer is offering the best deal on a PlayStation Vita yet. With the “Amazon Exclusive Holiday Walking Dead Vita Bundle,” you can get the original 3G / Wi-Fi model of the 5-inch gaming handheld with a 4GB memory card and voucher codes to download four great games for just $174.99, including Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Retro City Rampage, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, and The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season.

You’ll need a bigger memory card, though

To put that deal in perspective, the PlayStation Vita normally retails for $199.99 all by itself. Although you can find it today at several retailers today for $179.99 as part of their Black Friday sales, Amazon is head and shoulders above the crowd, offering a complete package deal for $5 less than you’d pay for the bare system somewhere else. The only caveat is that you’ll probably need to pick up a larger Vita memory card, as Uncharted alone will take up 2.8GB of the 4GB stick that comes with the bundle.

Today also seems to be a good day to pick up a few choice Vita games as well, with several stores offering discounts on titles. Target is offering Gravity Rush for $19.99, and GameStop has the excellent Persona 4 Golden for $19.99.

Sony cuts PS Vita price to $199.99, reduces cost of memory cards

2013-08-20T13:29:31-04:00

PS Vita (stock)

The PlayStation Vita price cut you've been waiting for is finally here: Sony has just announced that the PS Vita's retail price is being slashed to $199 in the United States. That's down from its previous MSRP of $249.99. The portable is also being slashed to €199 across European territories. Better still, Sony has pledged to "make significant reductions" to the cost of memory cards for the Vita, which until now have been priced extraordinarily high compared with SD cards and other, non-proprietary flash memory. The 4GB Vita memory card now starts at $14.99, down from an original price of $19.99. 8GB cards have been reduced by $10 to $19.99, …

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Sony expands Vita streaming support and improves icon visuals

2013-08-06T07:12:19-04:00

ps vita home screen bubbles

If you've been waiting for better streaming support and improved visuals on your PlayStation Vita, Sony's latest update has you covered. In firmware version 2.6, the company has tweaked the UI, made it easier to access saved game data on PlayStation Plus, and opened up new ways to toggle networking options. Sony has finally softened its circular content bubbles with antialiasing and has also introduced a new control screen - similar to Android toggles and Apple's Control Center in iOS 7 - which allows gamers to manage Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G settings simply by holding the PS button.

Vita owners can now stream content directly from connecte …

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Life support: can Sony save the PlayStation Vita?

2013-02-22T10:05:03-05:00

PS Vita stock os outdoors 900

The PlayStation Vita was released in North America one year ago today. A little earlier, I'd given the system a glowing review upon its Japanese launch, and what I wrote holds true: the hardware is still fantastic, the screen is still beautiful, and there's still no better platform for playing games on the go. In theory.

In practice, things haven't quite worked out that way. Sales are lower than Sony expected, there's little in the way of exciting software on the horizon, and there are real questions surrounding the future of dedicated handheld games consoles in general. For a system with a name that's supposed to connote "life," the PS Vit …

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Sony isn’t planning to cut PlayStation Vita price in North America

2013-02-21T11:36:13-05:00

vita

Sony's hoping that a price cut will accelerate sales of the PlayStation Vita in Japan after months of sluggish retail performance. Unfortunately the company won't be granting North American customers the same generosity - at least not yet. Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida today revealed that Sony will not be lowering the Vita's price in North America. According to Polygon, the executive attributed the Japanese MSRP reduction to a favorable exchange rate, a luxury it would seem doesn't extend elsewhere at the moment. Gamers in Japan can look forward to a lower 19,980 yen price set to kick in starting February 28th. And while So …

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Sony adds instant ‘remote play’ of PlayStation 4 games on PS Vita

2013-02-20T18:40:47-05:00

via d35lb3dl296zwu.cloudfront.net

Sony has announced a new "remote play" feature for the PS Vita, which will allow PlayStation 4 games to be played directly on the Vita. "Our long term goal is to make every PS4 title playable on the Vita," the company says. It's a strategy similar to what we've seen on the Nintendo Wii U and Nvidia's Project Shield, where home console or PC games can be streamed to a smaller second screen. Though we're not sure exactly how it works yet, Sony says it's integrated Gaikai technology that "effectively makes it a game server." Unfortunately, there appears to be no similar support for tablets, which effectively limits remote play to people who hav …

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Sony cuts PS Vita price by a fifth in Japan

2013-02-18T03:10:46-05:00

vita yen

Via an online video broadcast, Sony has announced a price cut for its ailing PS Vita handheld in Japan. From February 28th, both the Wi-Fi and 3G models of Vita will sell for 19,980 yen (about $215) - that's a fifth off the current price of 24,980 yen for the Wi-Fi model, and a third in the case of the 3G model.

Buyers will be able to take advantage of a free 1-week trial of PlayStation Plus along with promotions for the PlayStation Store and Reader ebook store. No cut has been announced for the rest of the world, but it's possible that one could come at the New York PlayStation Meeting on Wednesday, where Sony is widely expected to unveil …

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Play retro classics on your PS Vita with PlayStation Home Arcade

2013-02-05T12:55:08-05:00

PlayStation Vita

Today, Sony announced the launch of PlayStation Home Arcade, an app that lets users purchase arcade games for the PlayStation Vita. Home Arcade has a number of well-known retro classics like Frogger, Asteroids, and Centipede, as well as Astrosmash Gen2, Shark! Shark! Gen2, Mad Blocker, and Time Pilot, all available for $1.49. The app also features more recent games like Icebreaker and Wipeout 2D, which both come free with Home Arcade. A free demo of Scribbleshooter is also available, but the full game is priced at $1.49. Although the PlayStation Home branding might suggest a deeper tie in with the PS3, in actuality the only link is that the …

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Epix apps for PlayStation 3 and PS Vita coming later this year

2013-01-03T18:30:54-05:00

EPIX

Premium cable network newcomer Epix is working to continue bolstering the direct distribution portion of its business today, as it has announced that it will be releasing streaming apps for the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita. The new apps are launching later this quarter and in the spring, respectively, and they join a rather full roster of applications (iPhone, Android, Xbox 360, Roku, and even BlackBerry PlayBook apps are already available) that bring Epix's movie and entertainment event catalog directly to subscribers. The move is the latest step by Epix and the three movie studios - Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate - that own it to maintain powe …

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PS Vita firmware update 2.0 adds an email client and improves the browser

2012-11-19T23:33:47-05:00

ps vita email

Sony has released perhaps its biggest update yet to the PlayStation Vita. Apart from coming with support for PlayStation Plus on the handheld, firmware version 2.0 adds an email client along with improvements to the browser and several other new features.

Email is below par next to a modern smartphone

The email app, simply called Email, is unsurprisingly below par next to what you'd expect from a modern smartphone. It's easy enough to use, with automatic setup for Gmail and Yahoo Mail accounts; one nice feature is that you can add multiple accounts, which is more than we can say for the Gmail app on iOS at least. However, it lacks basic fea …

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