Sony announced that the PSVita, which will be released on December 17th in Japan, will be available for preorders in Japan on October 15th. It has been confirmed that games won’t be region locked, meaning you can buy a Japanese PS Vita and play American or European games on it. The same cannot be said about 3G connectivity, which will depend on the country’s network standards. ( 3G Connectivity in Japan will be handled by Docomo, for a price which doesn’t sound super attractive to me, in the form of prepaid cards, about 15$ for 20h ). But a Wifi-only version of the PSVita will also be available, so it would make sense to import one…
Now that smartphones have a better performance than the 6-year-old PSP, will the PSVita find an audience, even though the 3DS hasn’t convinced? Retailers in Japan expect the device to be a massive hit as soon as Preorders start… I think it will all boil down to the amount of exclusive games they have on the device (How long will Uncharted fans resist?)