It’s rare that I am in the right place at the right time – normally the cool stuff happens when I decide to stay at home, or have to study. It was the curse of my childhood that I missed the good parties and when I did attend them something bad usually happened.

So it was a nice surprise when I walked into a Game store in Reading yesterday evening, while I had some time to kill, to find that they had a Demo version of the PSP Vita. Even better was that the shop was practically deserted, meaning that I could get some hands on time with the monster.

The above photo shoes the PSP in the Hand – its a pretty big machine. At almost 2cm thick, you know it’s there, but once you adjust to the chunky feel, it almost becomes an extension of your arm. And it is light. While you can feel the Vita with your hands, the weight barely registers, meaning you don’t tire of it quickly.

The 5″ (127mm),m 16:9 capacitive, multi-touch screen has a resolution of 960×544 which struck me a surprising low given the 960×640 resolution of the significantly smaller iPhone 4, yet it looked rather good. Supporting 16 million colours, the clarity of the screen was better than that of the PSP S&L or the PSP Go, both of which I have owned in the past. Additionally, the backlight was strong and you don’t have to strain your eyes to see what’s going on. Finally, the sensitivity of the screen was spot on, allowing for smooth navigation of the menu systems both on the Vita homescreen and in game as well.

While we are on the subject of software – this PSP was running version 1.52 showing that the old PSP software has been ditched in favour of a whole new interface built around touch. That being said the menu system seemed to have no real structure – unlike the old PSP software which seperated your media into categories, the Vita seemed to randomly place its icons, mixing Games into Videos, Pictures and Music.

The dual analogs are a welcome addition to the front of the Vita, allowing for more interactive play in games like Uncharted which utilises one for the character movement and another for the camera – much like many of the current console RPG’s on the market.

The back Touch Panel allows for an added degree of interaction in games – although there wasn’t much on the demo model that supported it. The only game available on the device with back panel integration was Uncharted 3 where it was used for some actions like climbing ladders, traversing walls etc, however it really felt like this was a last minute addition to the game- some of the demos seen when the Vita was first announced showed some really interactive gameplay where the back panel almost became another dimension in itself but this wasn’t reproduced well in Uncharted.

Getting down to the bare circuits so to speak, the Vita has a quad core ARM Cortex A9 at its core, giving the software a really smooth feeling. App’s open quickly (although games can take a very long time to load) and you can swap between them instantaneously, while closing an app or game completely is as easy as a swipe of the finger. The GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is the SGX543MP4+ which might look like a mouthful, but is also Quad-Core – giving the Vita an octo-core platform to base its games on. Hopefully this overhead will make for some really nice multi-threading in future games to bring really great performance.

In-game performance of the PSP was smooth…once the game loaded. Wipeout was fast paced and vivid (although that didn’t make me a better player) and the graphics were clean and crisp. While 6-axis control wasn’t enabled, Wipeout is said to support it, which would be a wlcome addition and work much better on a portable platform that on the console.

Everybody’s Golf, besides having a very Japanese twist (which I liked), has some cool capabilities too, such as using the motion sensor on the Vita for a first person game – you have to physically ‘look’ down the fairway to see where your shot went.

It was hard to tell from the limited time I had with the Vita but it did seem that there is no internal memory, which could explain some of the loading times for games. Personally, I am a little disappointed that a next-gen platform couldnt fit in a bit of flash memory – although no doubt its planned for a later hardware refresh.

Sony has confirmed that the PSP will launch in the UK with a 4, 8 and 16GB memory card available for it, but with no 32GB option some gamers have been more than a little annoyed. The shot below shows the memory card slot on the right, and the USB slot on the left.

In terms of connectivity, there will be two versions of the Vita available, one with just WiFi and one with added 3G (supported in the UK by Vodafone) allowing online play on the move. Additionally, both devices have built-in GPS and WiFi location services which makes the prospect of a maps app very likely.

The Vita is due for worldwide release on the 22nd February for both 3G and WiFi versions. So far 25 titles have been confirmed for US release, with the UK number seemingly a lot lower. The unit will be priced at £229.99 with games retailing at around £35.

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