In early
2012, sometime before March, Sony will be launching the PlayStation Vita in
America following the Japanese launch this year on December 17th.
Sony has now detailed how
customers will be able to acquire games for the system, stating it will come
with several means of purchase on day one. In an interview with GDC
Online, Chris Norden, senior staff developer support engineer at Sony, stated
that all games will have both retail and digital copies available at
the same time, similarly to how PC games are now released at stores and through services
like Steam. Price differences, if any, have not yet been discussed. 3G will be available for use when downloading on the PSN Vita service, as is
typical with modern phones, though the 20 megabyte cap will prevent many games
from being acquired this way. The second option is standard Wi-Fi which no
doubt most games will use if bought digitally due to their size.
While no further specifics were
talked about, Chris Norden did mention Sony will be offering such titles as free-to-play games on the digital service. Many people speculate their
ultimate goal in regards to PSN is to create a service similar to Steam that is unanimous
across all their future gaming devices, and this is certainly further evidence
of this.