Vita Week: PlayStation Vita First Edition Bundle

Finally here, after almost a year of waiting. The PlayStation Vita: First Edition Bundle. What's in the box you ask? It's the 3G/WiFi Vita Model with an exclusive carrying case, Lil Deviants game, and a 4GB memory card, plus the ultimate in early adopter bonus, getting the system a whole week ahead of the general public. I must say, that's a mighty nice bonus.

The first thing you'll notice about this little beauty is the size of the screen, a full 5" OLED screen, its a massive and beautiful sight to behold. Next, once you've got your hands on it, is the weight, not too light, not too heavy, but somehow right in the middle, it feels substantial while not being too overwhelming as to tire your hands.

The dual analog sticks feel like real, albeit small joysticks, not a sliding little nub like the PSP or Nintendo 3DS, feels great, and well overdue on a portable console.  The shoulder buttons feel good, with enough give to let you know it is registering your presses. The D-pad is a little spongy, but I think I live that, as it feels as if it will be perfect for fighting games, not too stiff.

The buttons are a tad small, smaller than the PSP, but I gladly give that up to make way for the size of the screen. Only the PlayStation button, Select and Start feel a little hard to press, as they are recessed into the system itself and makes it so that you have to press 'into' the button to let it register.

The touch screen interface is very responsive, think iPhone, as there is no lag as some other devices have shown. All in all, this is a very sexy piece of hardware, the only fault I can give it, is that it is a lint, and fingerprint magnet, I can barely touched it, and boom, fingerprints.

So far, I've only played Wipeout, but wow, those graphics are awesome, you will not be disappointed when you turn it on. A serious step up in graphics from the PSP, and these are just the launch games, can't wait to see what the next year or two have in store.

Speaking of the PSP, I've been successful in transferring my savegames I backed up onto my PC to the Vita, a very easy process once you've downloaded the Content Management software.
I was very afraid that I'd lose my saves from my old PSP-3000 once I moved onto the Vita.


You can find those instructions over here at PlayStation's manual site for the system.
So those are just my initial impressions, I'll be sure to put up some more stuff soon.