At long last, Sony has confirmed that its revised PlayStation Vita Slim model will be coming to North America! The device has already been available in Japan for a while now, even in several colour varieties in fact, and it just came to Europe this past Friday. The revised handheld will come to North American retail stores sometime this Spring.
Better still is that the PlayStation Vita Slim will come packing a new bundle, for the long-awaited PlayStation Vita release of Borderlands 2, which was recently declared to be publisher, 2K Games’ most successful game release to date. It’s been available for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 since September of 2012. Sony confirmed that Borderlands 2 will also release standalone for PlayStation Vita this Spring, finally bringing its addictive shoot-and-loot RPG hybrid action on the go for gamers!
The Borderlands 2 PlayStation Vita Slim bundle will retail for an agreeable $199.99. It was also confirmed that the Vita port of Borderlands 2 will come with a whopping six DLC packs built right into the game card/download, at no extra charge.
The PlayStation Vita Slim does away with the original handheld’s much-touted OLED screen, in favour of a more practical LCD display that improves battery life, also packing in 1 GB of built-in memory. Its slimmer build, approximately 15% lighter and 20% thinner than the original Vita model, has been praised as being more compact and affordable in contrast to the original Vita design, but has also been criticized by import journalists as being more cheaply-built and less sturdy.
Nonetheless, the release of the more affordable PlayStation Vita Slim should help the handheld find an even wider audience, especially since the PlayStation Vita doubles as a remote-streaming accessory for the recently-released PlayStation 4, and will support Sony’s upcoming PlayStation Now cloud-streaming service.
Sony confirmed on this note that struggling Vita sales have increased in other territories thanks to the more consumer-friendly Slim model, and that there are now over 1,000 games now available for PlayStation Vita, including PS One Classics and digital PlayStation Portable games from the handheld’s predecessor. Sony also claimed that a third of all PlayStation 4 owners also own a PlayStation Vita, and that 48% of PlayStation Vita game purchases are done digitally from the PlayStation Store.
Will you be picking up a PlayStation Vita Slim? Are you happy with the original model? Feel free to comment below.
Eggplante will continue to deliver your news on the PlayStation Vita Platform, as it’s revealed.