This really isn't so much as news as the announcement of non-news on the part of Rockstar, who are cautioning fans not to expect too much new info about the next game—at least for the next couple of months as they presumably plug away at the upcoming fake-L.A.-set open world action game.

Read on for more non-news in this non-announcement.

The info comes as part of Rockstar's ongoing Asked and Answered updates, where the studio responds to fan questions about their titles.

Here's the full response from Rockstar's rep about the in-development title:

First of all, we’d like to again thank you and everyone out there for the amazing response to the debut Grand Theft Auto V trailer. We know that there are a ton of questions you all have about the game, including release date and lots else.

Right now, we are very hard at work on the game and are excited as well to show and tell you more as development progresses - expect that we'll be talking much more about GTAV starting at some point in a few months’ time.

Please hang tight until then and thank you all for your patience and support!

As GameSpot rightly points out, E3 is right around the corner and might be the perfect time for new details about GTA V to start making themselves known. Right now, the presumption is that we'll see the next game, if not at the end of this year, then during the first half of the next.

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There's just no stopping the Angry Birds train and after 600 million or so downloads across mobile devices and PC the rig just keeps on chuggin'. Just in time for Valentine's Day, the fearless avian pig pounders have nestled themselves into a new home -- Facebook.

Obviously the game is going to be more of the tower toppling fun we've experienced with the franchise's earlier releases, but Rovio does have a few things up its sleeve to keep the experience fresh. In all there will be new social (surprise!) and competitive features, new power-ups and of course, Facebook exclusive levels.

“This launch is just the beginning for Angry Birds on Facebook,” said Petri Järvilehto, SVP of Game Publishing at Rovio. “We have great new features and gameplay lined up for the fans in the upcoming weeks. Angry Birds on Facebook will offer a unique experience for our fans, and we’re really excited to finally be on the platform.”

The power-ups are what separate this version from others giving players the chance to use the Sling Scope for pinpoint accuracy, the King Sling for added power and speed, Super Seeds that turn birds into giants and the Birdquake to bring the pigs tumbling down. The power-ups can be purchased or earned by progressing through the game. Facebook users can also give Mystery Gifts, which contain power-ups, to their friends.

As a Valentine's gift to Angry Birds fans, Rovio will give anyone who joins in on the Facebook action 14 free power-ups between now and February 16th.

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By Jason Cipriano

It all started in Japan in 2006 when Nintendo released Rhythm Tengoku for the Gameboy Advance. A wholly unique, mini-game collection, the game sprang from the minds of Yoshio Sakamoto, one of the creators of the WarioWare series, and Tsunku, a Japanese record producer, songwriter and vocalist. Differentiating itself from other mini-game titles, Tengoku tested the player's sense of rhythm and reflexes as they worked their way through a series of kooky activities. The GBA title never saw release stateside, however, in 2009 Western gamers got a taste of the series when its sequel was released for the DS as Rhythm Heaven. Now, three years later, Nintendo is rounding out their Rhythm Heaven offerings by releasing Rhythm Heaven Fever for the Wii. With more than 50 new games to keep the beat to Fever holds true to the series, whether you like it or not.

The Rhythm series is pretty basic: try to beat a series of mini-games, and the better that you do, the more games and features will be unlocked. All of the games in Fever revolve around timing button presses to the music, as well as what's happening on screen, which can be anything from golf with a mandrill to badminton with a cat in an airplane. The games vary in scope and challenge, but each has their own soundtrack and bizarre characters.

THE HIGHS

Delighting The Ears And Eyes
The Rhythm Heaven series have always been known for two things: the catchy music, and the adorable characters, neither of which Fever skimps on. Each of the 50 mini-games has a soundtrack that could get stuck in your head any day of the week, and star (at least one) adorable character, from a monkey with a tambourine to a luchador doing an interview. Making the game fun to look at and listen to makes it a lot easier to repeatedly play through games that you keep failing.

Just Two Buttons
One of the easiest games to compare Fever to is WarioWare Smooth Moves, because both games have a host of similarities, from gameplay to developers. However, there is one thing that Fever has going for it over Wario's Wii outing, and that's a simple control scheme. Fever's gameplay boils down to two buttons, A and B: all you need to do is press the buttons in time with the music (sounds easier than it actually is) and you're golden. There's no shaking, no rattling, and no rolling in this rhythm game, so you can sit back and focus on trying to do your best.

THE LOWS

Hitting The Wall
As fans of the rhythm genre know all too well, games like Fever are great, to a point, and then they just become too challenging. There's a wall built into the player's skill level and it's based on how complex of a beat they can follow. Much to some people's dismay, not everyone can keep a beat. Fever offers some solutions, allowing players to skip levels that they are repeatedly failing, but repeatedly failing a seemingly simple level doesn't necessarily instill a lot of confidence. Rhythm Heaven and Rhythm Tengoku both had the same problems, the latter of which was further complicated by the fact that the entire game was in Japanese.

Two-Players... Kinda
Fever's box boasts that the game includes a two-player mode, which is a first for the series. Unfortunately, of the 50 plus games that are included, only ten of them can be played with a friend, and zero of them are unlocked from the start. Additionally, the ten that are included are simply variations on the single player games, with no unique offering for multiplayer enjoyment. It's great that the feature was included, but it seems to fall short of what could have been included to make two-player a more robust experience.

THE VERDICT
Rhythm Heaven Fever keeps faithful to its GBA and DS predecessors in just about every way, bringing everything fans loved to the big screen. From the catchy music, to the adorable humor everything's there, especially the challenging gameplay. Since the series has always been musically driven, there's a segment of the gaming population that is going to be alienated (the rhythmically challenged) making it really easy to hit a wall early on in the game and call it quits. However, if you can overcome that barrier, Rhythm Heaven Fever offers a substantial amount of content that's unlike anything else that's out there, at a great price. It's absolutely worth checking out, especially if you can feel the beat. Even if you can't, like most rhythm games, Fever is still pretty fun to just sit back and enjoy.

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Symphony and The Bridge grab multiple awards in the D.I.C.E. Summit's annual Indie Game Challenge, with Closure by Eyebrow Interactive taking home the big $100,000 prize, proving that the puzzle-platformer is and will continue to be alive and well in the hearts of young, independent-minded designers.

The full list of winners as well as synopses of their games from the IGC site after the break.

Grand Prize ($100,000): Closure by Eyebrow Interactive

Closure is a unique and stylistic puzzle platformer that takes the concept of light and shadow and twists it up into something never before seen.

You see, in Closure's dark and foreboding universe, the only things that exist are what you can see. An object properly lit up is physically there, yet an object shrouded in darkness ceases to be. Your character can take advantage of this by manipulating lights to effectively change the shape of the world you're in. Wanna jump through a wall? Well you can, as long as it's in darkness.

Technical Achievement ($2,500): Symphony by Empty Clip Studios

Your music is under attack... you must liberate it! Symphony is one of the most music-driven games ever made. It's a vertical shooter where everything is driven by your music. The unique musical content of every one of your songs creates both a unique level, and a unique item you can equip and upgrade. With your music as the inspiration, six difficulty levels, upgradable items and customizability, Symphony offers a long-lasting, unique gameplay experience.

Achievement in Art Direction ($2,500): The Bridge by Ty Taylor and Mario Castaneda

The Bridge is a 2-D logic-based puzzle game that forces the player to reevaluate their preconceptions of physics and perspective. It is Isaac Newton meets M. C. Escher—Manipulate gravity to redefine the ceiling as the floor, and venture through impossible architectures. Explore increasingly difficult worlds, each uniquely detailed and guaranteed to leave the player with a pronounced sense of accomplishment, while immersing the player into a captivating story. The Bridge exemplifies games as an art form, with beautifully hand-drawn art in the style of a black-and-white lithograph.

Achievement in Gameplay ($2,500): The Bridge by Ty Taylor and Mario Castaneda

GameStop PC Digital Download Award: Symphony by Empty Clip Studios

Gamer's Choice Award – Voted on by the Public ($2,500): Nitronic Rush by Team Nitronic

Nitronic Rush is an experimental survival driving game developed by students at DigiPen Institute of Technology. Use the car's many abilities (including boost, wings, and jump) to avoid obstacles that the city throws at you. Prove your abilities and impress the announcer by performing tricks.

In many ways the game is a tribute to racing games of the 1990's, but with fresh graphics and gameplay. The game includes a primary story mode as well as various other modes, such as an intense gravity-defying hardcore mode and an exploration stunt mode where you can try to get the most points before the clock runs out.

The entire game (including the advanced graphics, physics, and architecture) was developed from the ground up using C++ for the PC (Windows XP/Vista/7) platform. It was not created as a mod or using any pre-made engines such as Unity or Unreal. The graphics technology includes an advanced inferred high dynamic range lighting engine, bloom, motion blur, and particle engine all written from scratch. The physics technology includes Minkowski Portal Refinement, dynamic axis-aligned bounding box spatial partitioning, arbitary mesh collision, and a full car suspension system also coded from the ground up.

[Source: Game Politics]

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Fan of the console and PC collectible card dueling game? Well, some Internet sleuthing into South Korea's game ratings by Siliconera might have unearthed a 2013 entry in Wizard of the Coast's series which has done some very responsible business over the summer. If any news develops about this release, we'll be sure to bring it your way.

Find out more after the break.

After Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 made its debut this year on XBLA, PSN, and the Steam after previous entries in the series, it seems more than likely that card game maker Wizards of the Coast and developer Stainless Steel Games might be looking to keep bringing Magic to your consoles (and your PC).

According to the Siliconera post, the game is only rated for the 360, but they're right to point out that this doesn't necessarily imply that's the only platform on which we'll see the arcade-style take on the series taking a bow—I'd really be surprised if it wasn't fully multiplatform this go-round, too, especially after garnering about half a million downloads in the six months it's been available on XBLA.

[Source: Siliconera]

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Forgive the rough (and possibly inaccurate Latin), but this week, the Vita launch begins as some gamers get their hands on the first wave of the limited edition console. Big name franchises like Lumines and Uncharted mark Sony's new system's debut, while on the home console and PC front, Alan Wake is finally on your personal computers, UFC 3 brings the pain, and Twisted Metal returns.

Check out some of this week's major releases after the break.

In the coming days we plan to provide pretty comprehensive coverage and impressions of Sony's new handheld launch which has, at least based on first glance, a pretty strong lineup of first and third party titles out of the gate. The question is really how much will this be the Vita's first week in Japan and how much it'll be the subsequent, spiraling-out-of-control weeks?

Sony's delivered a sweet and sexy new piece of hardware with software and social capabilities that might be a game-changer in the handheld space, but it's all about grabbing gamers' attention. I think gamers were ready for the Vita when the PSP Go came out, but that's not to say Sony has missed their shot—expectations among fans Sony's forays into the handheld space just have weirdly modulated expectations at this point (myself included, having adopted a PSP early on and stuck by it for about three up and down years).

I'll have some thoughts about Sony's next moves beyond this point (because I am nothing if not a bunch of very loud, very present opinions) but for now, enjoy this nearly complete list of titles dropping today and stay tuned for reviews of most if not all of them (along with many, many more Vita games in the coming weeks).

Title: Uncharted: Golden Abyss
Platform(s): PS Vita

Title: Lumines: Electronic Symphony
Platform(s): PS Vita

Title: Rayman Origins
Platform(s): PS Vita

Title: Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3
Platform(s): PS Vita

Title: Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational
Platform(s): PS Vita

Title: Wipeout 2048
Platform(s): PS Vita

Title: Twisted Metal
Platform(s): PS3

David Jaffe is one of those people for whom the word "outspoken" feels inadequate.* A notorious advocate for and defender of his projects (and the work of his teams) it was nonetheless surprising to find out recently that he left Twisted Metal developer Eat, Sleep, Play for other ventures after the resurrection of the Playstation-exclusive vehicular combat game (a genre that seemed to have a glut of entries once upon a time).

Departures and developers aside, what's the response going to be like to this kind of game in this decade? Are there enough people with fond memories of Twisted Metal Black or even the PS1 entries to give this reboot the push it needs at retail? I personally love a comeback story (and can be counted in that category of fans of the earlier titles) so here's to the success of Twisted Metal this week.

*Last I checked on Twitter Monday, he was still out there talking about responses to the recently-released demo and even guessing that some reviews swirling around weren't necessarily based on the full game.

Title: UFC 3
Platform(s): PS3, Xbox 360

I have yet to play one of THQ's licensed MMA brawlers, but I feel like I need to get around to it at some point. Wait, do you guys care if I point out these blind spots? I'd hate to think it diminishes what I'm sure is a booming authoritative voice on gaming... or something, I guess. The franchise that Dana White and company built is, I've read, one of the fastest-growing sports in the worlds right now, and the games seem to do well enough for publisher THQ. I chalk it up to catering to an audience who grew up at then end of the 90's and beginning of the aughts with a healthy love of WWE-style wrestling and as they got older kind of figured they should trade in the theatrics for real-live eye gouges.

That's my theory, anyway, and you can't take it away from me.

Title: Alan Wake
Platform(s): PC

Better late than never, right? Remedy's banking that if you have a PC and haven't played their entry in the survival horror genre, then you'll be enticed by this week's release which also includes all of the DLC which accompanied the game on the 360. And if you haven't played this game, you really should. Although it's shaky in both its narrative and mechanical execution—on the former you can't get away from the feeling that there are some Finnish folks working to translate a uniquely American style of airport reading pulp horror—the Microsoft-published game had one toe in the pool of greatness (and one of my favorite last lines in a game in recent memory).

Title: Rhythm Heaven Fever
Platform(s): Wii

I remember my time with this series DS counterpart with equal parts glee and frustration, most of the frustration stemming from my basic lack of rhythm (certainly a shame to the more musically-inclined members of my family), and all of the elation coming directly from my love of the generally excellent rhythm minigames from the innocuously named Nintendo SPD Group 1. Will its Wii counterpart have the same magic? Only time (and Jason Cipriano in his forthcoming review) can tell.

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Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning is a pretty direct response of Skyrim, from the way that it tells its story, way the world is laid out, and—most importantly—the way the visceral, third-person combat works. Set in a brightly-colored high fantasy world in contrast to Skyrim's more realistically-minded environment, as an answer, it's not nearly perfect and presents its own host of issues to the open world RPG formula.

Note: this review is based on 15 hours with Kingdoms of Amalur, but in the interest of timeliness, I wanted to provide an assessment of the game that I've played up until this point, which includes a healthy amount of the main quest line as well as a couple dozen side missions. However, I reserve the right to revisit it down the line when I've had more time with the game.

THE BASICS

Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning might be the first RPG that I'm aware of where you play as a zombie. Okay, maybe not a zombie in the technical sense—you're a slain soldier resurrected by some industrious gnomes—but you are technically the living dead! Anyway, that innovation aside, there plot of the game and the actual mechanics deal with fate and how your character is somehow outside of it thanks to your "resurrection." The cohesiveness of these elements are maybe the strongest bits of KoA, showing a real sense of interplay between what the game is about, what it is, and what it does.

It's an open-world RPG, so it more or less does what you expect it to do on that front: you'll wander the varied landscapes, encountering characters and engaging in fetch and/or kill quests for XP and loot, while occasionally (depending on the kind of gamer you are) digging into the game's main quest line.

I'm going to go into why the combat and the systems surrounding it are so terrific in the WHAT'S GOOD section below, but yeah, it does feel like the third-person, combo-heavy, almost DMC-style combat is a direct response to the more methodical, first-person action of a game like Skyrim or even a good, old-fashioned JRPG. Some quirks in its implementation aside, KoA combat is the counterpoint to the effectively transparent dice rolls you see going on with other modern RPGs and it feels like a proper action game wrapped in RPG elements.

Here's how the combat and character creation of the game is layered: after creating your character (the usual race, face, body, etc.), you'll dump points into your basic Skills (Mercantile, Persuasion, etc.) in order to receive bonuses along with them. Then you'll drop some points in your abilities, which are divided across three classes: Finesse (fleet footed, low-to-medium damage weapons like bows), Strength (swords, hammers, and shields), and Sorcery (staves and additional magic spells). The Ability pages have progressive trees with upgradeable abilities, and when they relate to a weapon type, unlock additional moves for your character. Finally, you'll select a Destiny for your character, which is effectively like a class, without locking you into anything: Destinies are like catch-all buffs for your existing Abilities, providing bonuses tuned to your style of play. As the game progresses and you level up, you can unlock additional tiers in the list of Destiny cards.

Oh, and this is the most important and compelling reason to dig into the game for a few hours, at least: if you don't like the way your character plays, you can pay a Fateweaver a fee to undo all of your points across all three screens and reset them to your liking.

In terms of weapons and gear, KoA takes its inspiration from dungeon crawlers and you'll constantly be picking up new arms and armor as you kill the many brightly-colored enemies in the world. You have limited slots for the many items you pick up in the world, but instead of upping your carrying capacity as you level up, you'll have to buy backpacks from sellers scattered throughout the world (usually for a hefty fee). You can also craft your own weapons, armor, and potions based on loot that you pick up and equipment that you break down if that's your sort of thing.

As for the story, well, I'm only 15 hours in, but I'd actually have to rely on the game's press to tell you what it is about, and I blame this in part on a mostly boilerplate tale of of fate and destiny (or lack thereof) with lots of very difficult-to-contain-in my-head names and factions, and in part on my own inclinations when it comes to fantasy fiction, which is to say, I'm very much into it when the fantasy is kind of pushed the the background a little bit. Basically, an evil fae is making a power play for the entire kingdom, and his may or may not have a powerful god on his side and you, with your completely blank fate are the only one who can stop him.

This is one of the those tricky points where I have to split the difference when it comes to my reaction to the overall material: is the narrative not good because I'm not into its kind of story? Or is how much of it comes down to a complicated story that strains instead at a more desirable complexity instead?

Narrative (and some awkward presentation issues) aside, KoA is such an eclectic and interesting RPG, and it's actually a (weirdly) welcome respite from the type of enjoyment I've been getting with Skyrim.

I'm actually pretty late to the Shank party, having missed the release of the 2010 game during its initial release. Don't worry, I caught up with the first game a couple of months back and this was actually very useful for this review since it allowed me to see, pretty much side-by-side the changes and improvements that developer Klei Entertainment put into the sequel to their 2D beat 'em up, released last week on PSN, XBLA, and for the PC.

So is Shank 2 worth a trip back into the grimy, killer dog and machete-wielding henchman world that Klei has created? Or is it just more of the same old same old? Check out the review and find out.

THE BASICS

Shank 2 returns to the exploitation cinema-inspired world of the first game, this time with the titular antihero cutting his way through the dictatorial military in an unnamed South American country. Civilians are being kidnapped and Shank won't have any part of that, so he'll be using a mix of his handy knives, machetes, a sledgehammer, shotgun, and pistols to dole out grindhouse-style justice over eight story chapters and in the game's new co-op Survival mode.

The gameplay has been overhauled by its development team, but not so much that it would feel unfamiliar to anyone who played the first game. Combat feels a little tighter this time around, with one attack flowing smoothly into the next. Klei stated in a blog post leading up to the release of the game that one of their aims with the sequel was to introduce players to the mechanics gradually this time around, instead of all at once up front as they did in the first game. They've clearly articulated some of my experience with the first game, where I was so front-loaded with attack techniques, that I was pretty unprepared in later chapters when I needed to play more of a defensive game.

And to a certain extent, they've succeeded here, albeit with a major mechanical change that I'm still on the fence about. In the first game, you could swap out your heavy melee and projectile weapons on the fly, however in Shank 2, you choose your loadout (and character skin) before each chapter. This is as a consequence of the way that the additional weapons are unveiled throughout the game, as the machetes, pistols, sledgehammer, and shotgun making their appearances later in the game as well as Molotovs and mines. The net consequence is that you'll need to have played the chapter previously to plan accordingly with your equipment or, if it's your first time through, simply make a best guess.

The other big change is the addition of a red exclamation indicator above enemies which tells you when you can counter (using RT on the 360 and R2 on the PS3). Counters are quick-kill moves that are pretty tricky to time, particularly when you're surrounded by some pretty aggressive enemies on all sides and it might be a little tough to keep an eye out for the icon. This could have used some kind of audio cue or something similar because in my experience it was often easy to miss them. This new move joins a roll evade which can be triggered by the right thumbstick which is usually very useful, but on occasion, I did end up rolling right into another enemy attack.

Finally, the other big addition is the two player local/online co-op Survival mode where you'll protect three positions on a map from being blown up by the waves on incoming enemies. The action here can get pretty frenetic, but beyond tracking what's happening with the onscreen action, it's actually a very effective use of the mechanics you've learned in the campaign. You and your partner will earn points that can be spent in the Shop menu, allowing you to deploy turrets, health power-ups, a killer boar, a grenade launcher and other tools of destruction. You'll also be able to use some of the new character skins you've picked up, each one getting buffs to their equipment and weapons. This subs in for the first game's co-op mini-campaign, and I think I may have spent more time in this mode than in the story mode.

WHAT'S GOOD

Tighter combat, meaner Shankings

Again, I think Klei has effectively accomplished their mission to make Shank 2 a bit more friendly in how it teaches you how to dole out bloody vengeance, but it also helps that mechanically, it feels a bit more fluid than the first game, whose animations were elegant and cool, but at the cost of the ability to effectively respond to what felt like much faster enemies. I don't believe I ever racked up any super-impressive combos this time out, but at the same time, I also felt like I knew how to play the game better in this go-round.

Co-op is addictive (with caveats)

Here is where I feel like the game's mechanics are best articulated. Plus, there's something really great about being able to order and deploy a flame-spewing turret when the zombies show up or drop a bunch of enemies into a shredder at the bottom of the map. The only caveat here is that with two people and a dozen or so enemies on screen, your equipment going off, background animation, etc., the action can get so frenetic that the game will succumb to a bit of slowdown, and more problematically, you might even lose track of your character.

Fluid, fantastic animation and art style

I just want to give some respect to the game's exploitation movie-inspired art style, which toes the line between cartoon and gruesome, with all sorts of creative kills and unique counter and execution moves.

WHAT'S BAD

Some pretty rough voice acting spoils the fun

It almost feels a little petty to pick on the VO in an indie game, but it's in there and it's sometimes distractingly rough (and not in a winking, ironic sort of way, either). The line reading by some of the characters is stiff and it doesn't help that some of the audio levels flatten out the sound so that the actors don't ever sound like they're in any kind of environment beyond a sound booth.

Ditto the super-thin story

The story is, in effect, more of a wrapper for the gameplay this time around. Shank wasn't about to win any awards for narrative, but Shank 2 is mostly a hodgepodge of elements to push you from one chapter to the next until the stakes are kind of articulated around the third and the villain (who is presented early on and quickly forgotten) making his appearance in the eighth and final chapter. It's not terrible, just mostly nonexistent.

THE VERDICT

If you missed out on the first game (or really, really liked it), I think Shank 2 is definitely worth your time. The couple of hours that you'll spend on the brisk campaign (minus time going through to collect more medals and unlock additional characters) as well as the multiplayer mode are well worth the time. Klei has done a fine job of polishing some of the more uneven elements of the first game without noodling with the formula too much so that it feels like the experience is off. As far as it goes, it's definitely some of the most fun I've had with a 2D brawler in a long while.

Shank 2 is available for PS3 and PC for $10 and for the Xbox 360 for 800 MS points.

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The game, simply titled Star Trek for now, would be the title that Digital Extremes has been developing and showed off at E3 last year. Namco Bandai will be handling part of the publishing and distribution duties with the franchise's owner, Paramount Pictures, with an eye towards a release sometime in Q1 of next year, according to a press release from the two companies.

While story details remain scarce, it's clear the movie won't be based on the movie, per se, but will involve "iconic characters Kirk and Spock as they work together to stop a legendary enemy race bent on conquering the galaxy." The script will be by God of War writer Marianne Krawczyk along with the Star Trek reboot's producers/writers/bringers of the Transformers movies Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, and the story and gameplay will lean heavily on a co-op experience. Kirk and Spock will be shooting like bros is how I read that.

Curiously, (at least for this particular franchise) there's been no mention so far about how space travel and all that good stuff might figure into the game—but I suspect based on the release that this isn't really what Digital Extremes (the team behind Bioshock II, The Darkness II) is after.

The new game is due Q1 of 2013 for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

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In 2005 Sony attempted to do the unthinkable, take on Nintendo in the handheld market, with the PlayStation Portable. At that point in time, prior to the release of the Wii, it was the only place that Nintendo was still a powerhouse, having reigned supreme since the release of the original Game Boy in 1989. At the time, Sony was the clear leader in the console market, and was on the verge of announcing the PlayStation 3. The release of the PlayStation Portable came two years after it was announced at E3 in 2003, and was initially seen as a success, selling more than 60 million units worldwide, establishing Sony as a clear player in the handheld field. Now, seven years later, Sony is releasing the PSP's successor, the PlayStation Vita. The superior hardware in every way, the Vita is looking to bring console-quality games to the portable arena.

Not surprisingly, the portable landscape is completely different than it was in 2005, and Sony is now just competing with not just Nintendo, but also Apple, as well as the Android platform. While that is some stiff competition, the Vita appears to be up to the task. Over the past couple of weeks we put the U.S. version of the PlayStation Vita through its paces to see if it can hold its ground, and remain a player, with so much competition in the game. Needless to say, Sony has come along way since the first release of the PSP.
The Hardware:

At first glance, the Vita may appear to be a monster of a "portable," clocking in at 7.2 inches wide, and 3.2 inches tall, but in reality, it's only slightly bigger than the PSP's 6.7 x 2.9 inch dimensions. Additionally, the raised analog sticks add some extra (but necessary) height, making it taller than it's predecessor. The system's rounded edges cause it seem like it's a lot bigger than it is, but once it's in your hands, it doesn't feel overwhelming. Additionally, both the WiFi and 3G models are lighter than the PSP-1000 design, making it less tenuous to hold for extended periods.

The Screen
The biggest and brightest new aspect of the Vita is its screen. A 5-inch OLED touch screen, it's significantly bigger than the PSP's and either of the 3DS' screens, making it the biggest of the dedicated gaming devices. In addition to its size, it's quite bright, making every color in the rainbow pop. Sony has also taken a queue for Apple and Nintendo by making the screen touch sensitive, and encouraging developers to take advantage of this new feature. The touchscreen also makes Sony's new user interface, LiveArea, a breeze to use, putting navigation between pages or open applications at the tip of your finger.

The Controls
One of the biggest flaws of the PSP was its analog nub. While numerous developers attempted to work around it, coming up with numerous different control schemes to accommodate their games, there was really no substitute for a second analog. The Vita's dual analog sticks should not be undersold as one of its biggest selling points, as it allows for truly console-comparable controls in a portable, for the first time. The sticks feel a little on the small side, but they aren’t as uncomfortable or jumpy as the PSP's analog nub.

Connectivity
Something very reassuring to find was that the Vita played nice with everyone. It's simple and easy to connect to your PS3 or a desktop (PC or Mac), making sharing media and backing up the Vita a breeze. The PS3 will recognize the device immediately when connected with the proprietary USB cord, whereas anyone looking to connect to a computer will need to download the desktop software to take advantage of media sharing. Unfortunately, wireless connections to the PS3 are only available via Remote Play (which also sets up and works seamlessly), but not when using the Content Manager.

Cross-Platform Play
One of the ways that the Vita is thinking outside of the box is by allowing players to play outside of their box. Certain Vita games will sync up with PlayStayion 3 games, and allow players on the go to game against people tethered to their TVs. With two games in the launch line-up taking advantage of cross-platform play, Wipeout 2048 and Hustle Kings, Vita owners will get to go head-to-head against anyone that's playing on another Vita or a PS3. Taking it one step further, when MLB 12: The Show and MotorStorm RC are released they will include cross platform game save capabilities, which means they will share of progress back and forth between PS3s and Vitas.

Backwards Compatibility
The Vita also includes backwards compatibility, although it's not exactly what most fans were hoping for. This handheld has opted to do away with the PSP's UMDs, and move to a PlayStation Vita card, meaning that physical PSP games will not be able to be played or transferred to a Vita. However, digital PSP titles are available in the PlayStation Store, where they can be downloaded and played on the new system. There's a bit of a catch though: if you already own a UMD of a game, you'll need to buy it again as a download (some games come at a discount, others do not). Japan's Passport system, which offered discounts on digital titles for UMD owners, was scrapped for the States, leaving PSP owners with large UMD libraries high and dry. On the up side, PSP games can be downloaded and installed directly to the system, allowing easy access to (currently only 275 of) your favorite titles. One small problem that players may run into while playing PSP games on the Vita is that they look pretty bad. That's because bilinear filtering is not turned on by default, and will cause your PSP games to look pixilated and jaggy. Turning this on will upscale the games to the Vita's screen. Also of note: PSOne games can not currently be played on a Vita, only via Remote Play, as long as the game resides on a connected PS3.

Battery Life
Sony promised 3-5 hours of gameplay from the Vita's non-replaceable battery with basically all of the features turned off. While that may not seem like a lot, for a portable device it actually seemed rather sufficient. The battery seems to hold up to that promise, since it only required a charge after a day's worth of standard use (gaming, media, and PlayStation Store browsing – all with the WiFi on).

Everything Else
In addition to all of the standard hardware, the Vita has offered some unique upgrades from its predecessor. Games and apps will take advantage of VGA cameras on both the front and back of the system. A rear touch screen offers up some unique and unexpected gameplay options, and could most likely serve as a worthy L2 and R2 replacement. And finally, Sony have ported over their Sixaxis motion sensing, which hopefully developers will use sparingly, because no one likes to look like they're pretend driving on the subway.