The design aesthetics for the PS Vita are much like many in Sony’s line; bold, black and very long lines. The Vita is no exception, with stunning curves, a gorgeous 5-inch screen, and a touch pad feature on the back that has widely been considered a positive addition to the hand held gaming world.
Sony designer Takashi Sogabe out of Sony’s Corporate Design Centre reflected on much of the choices the team had to make, ensuring that console reflected a handheld design, rather than yet another tablet device.
“It’s almost as if we settled on five inches in order to really maximize the same impact that we felt when we first saw it,” said Sogabe on the choice to go with a 5 inch screen over a 5.5 inch one. “It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking bigger is better when it comes to screen size but it isn’t.
“There was a great deal of discussion and we even talked about using a 5.5 inch screen with all of the buttons included on it, but that had a negative impact on the operability of the device and the idea was abandoned.”
On reflecting about using physical buttons, notably the dual analog sticks, Sogabe said that the design was imperative when they realized how crucial the sticks were to the console. “The engineers have been working on the PS Vita analog sticks for quite some time and it is a much greater technical challenge to build sticks this small than you might imagine.
“We also built a prototype with flat slide pads, a bit like what you have on your laptop, but it just didn’t feel responsive enough for gaming and we learned that you need that physical response of tilting the stick to feel like you have total control.”
Sales for the device have been less than stellar, but the Vita hopes to make a big splash in the U.S. in less than a month.
[PS Blog]
