Sony Gamescom News 2011

Europe's biggest Game Convention has just finished streaming its Sony press conference. There wasn't any big announcements except two hardware announcements.

New PSP Model - There will be a new PSP model that will be coming out for 99 euro. It looks like it will be smaller than the current PSP and it will not have wifi built in. Smaller internals, a price drop, and a smaller form factor does make sense. It is basically the PSP version of the Game Boy Advance Micro that was released close to when the DS came out. What I personally do not understand is that they took out wifi when much of PSP's functionality comes from wifi. It basically means that firmware updates cannot be done using the internet and that there will be no multiplayer games.

PS3 Price Drop - The PS3 will be price dropped to 25000 yen, 250 Euro, and 250 dollars, effective immediately. Due to the recent rumors of a newer PS3 slim that is more efficient and cheaper to produce came the suggestion that there will be a price drop. There was rampant speculation that the PS3 would get either a $50 or $100 price drop to counter Microsoft's incredible success with the Kinect hardware. Sony has just sent its answer, a $50 price drop. Here is hoping that it will continue to provide great competition to this long console war.

There was no big announcements regarding the PS Vita. We know the price, but we still don't know that launch date in Japan, Europe, and America aside from the fact that it will be released in Japan before the end of the year and the EU and America will get a 2012 release. I am hoping we get more details at the Tokyo Game Show or another event to know more about the PS Vita. That is the console I want to buy because everything so far sounds promising.

Update: It has officially been announced that the PS Vita will have 512 MB of main ram and 128 MB of VRAM. Those are some pretty awesome specs for the RAM. With this much RAM the PS Vita should provide us with some very impressive games graphically. For reference, it has more random access memory than the PS3, X360, and the Wii.