What We Know (And What I've Heard) About the Very Real PlayStation Vita

I probably spent too much of lazy BBQ with friends yesterday afternoon poking around on my phone about PlayStation Vita, allegedly the final name for the ugly-sounding Next-Generation Portable (NGP), but it all sounded like a bunch of nonsense.

Vita? Really? But I can tell you there's reason to suspect it's the final name.

The rumors started when Games Pundit cited an anonymous source telling them Sony would announce NGP's final name at E3 next week: Vita. Most shrugged their shoulders, but some legitimate-looking presentation images leaked on another blog, Mega Rock. That blog's since taken itself down. Too late, though.

There's more circumstantial evidence. Try pointing your browser towards vita.scedev.net, which leads you to Sony's developer portal--ngp.scedev.net works, too. psp2.scedev.net leads to a browser error, however, which means the subdomains were made legitimate by Sony.

Someone also registered playstationvita.com and psvita.com on April 19, long before rumors.

I've talked to several developer sources, all of whom asked to remain anonymous, as E3 is so close. But each confirmed Vita was definitely the codename for the project when Sony was first showing the hardware to developers. One developer said his company has stopped referring to the machine as Vita, preferring NGP or PSP2, but was unclear if Vita had been dropped.

When Sony revealed its next portable in January, it was not supposed to have "NGP" attached, I'm told. Sony was unable to find internal consensus on a final name, so the event grudgingly went ahead with something temporary. At the time, however, it was being referred to internally as Vita.

None of my sources were able to say with complete certainty whether Vita has stuck and that's the name that'll appear at Sony's press conference next week. But don't be surprised if it does.

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