Early this morning, while many in the UK were waking up or on their way to work, Sony held their pre-TGS press conference to show off some of the surprises they had in store before the main event later this month. Among new game info for already announced titles, Sony debuted several new PS Vita games, including a sequel to the popular Soul Sacrifice which launched worldwide earlier in the year.

To accompany the new games Vita owners could look forward to, Sony teased not 1 but 2 different PS Vita consoles, The PS Vita Slim and the PS Vita TV!

 

PS Vita Slim

The PS Vita Slim (official title, PCH-2000) marks the first hardware revision for the Vita since its launch and presents the hardware in a 20% thinner and 15% lighter chassis, which will be available in a variety of colours. The Vita Slim will come in multiple colours as soon as it’s released and also has 1GB of built-in user accessible memory, so that you can save your game data to the internal memory rather than having to remember to pick up a memory card with the console. The OLED screen has also been swapped out for an LCD screen and the Vita now recharges and syncs using a standard micro-usb cable, rather than the proprietary usb connection from the launch model.

 

PS Vita TV

In an announcement no one could have predicted, Sony presented the PS Vita TV, a microconsole based on PS Vita hardware which connects to your TV and can be used with your existing DualShock 3 controllers. The unit has the same memory and game card slots as the PS Vita and will be able to play compatible Vita games, PSP and PSOne games as well as compatible media and apps like hulu and Sony’s Music Unlimited service all on your TV. Priced at 9480 Yen (approx £60), it looks like the Vita TV could be poised to take on other small form factor consoles like the Ouya or GameStick or even media streaming devices like the Apple TV. In the video following the announcement, the PS Vita is also shown utilizing the Vita’s ‘Remote Play’ feature with the PS4, while using a DualShock 4 controller.

For those who were interested in some of the games coming out for the Vita but weren’t fans of playing games on portable consoles, the Vita TV could be one to look out for when/if worldwide release details are announced. It will be interesting to see how the lack of the touchscreen/touchpad affects the playability of games that use those features within the core game mechanics. A preliminary compatibility list has been put up on Sony’s website but it seems like a few games that would use the touch or AR features are currently missing.

Via Sony Playstation JP [1] [2]