Sony’s next PlayStation Portable is the PS Vita, arriving later this year

If mobile gaming is your thing, you’ll be pleased to know that Sony’s update to the PSP is coming later this year, and it’ll come with an OLED touchscreen, quad-core CPU, and a price tag that will probably come in at under $300.

Announced earlier this year with the codename “Next Generation Portable,” the new handheld console finally has a name: Sony PlayStation Vita.

The Sony PS Vita will take games in the form of Vita memory cards, ditching the UMD slot found on the original PlayStation Portable.

Using the Latin word for “life”, the Vita aims to breathe new life into Sony’s mobile gaming space. With the combination of a 5 inch touchscreen OLED screen and extra touchpad found on the back of the Vita, it’s expected that users will be able to interact with games from multiple angles.

Under the hood, Sony is packing in the specs, with a quad-core processor, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, six-axis motion control (like on the PS3 controllers), front and rear cameras, and even GPS and 3G.

Of course, a game console is nothing without a selection of titles, and as you can expect, Sony is working hard on this. Already, we’ve heard that the Vita will have its own versions of “ModNation Racers”, “Wipeout 2048”, “LittleBigPlanet”, “Street Fighter versus Tekken”, and a new title in the PlayStation 3’s “Uncharted” series.

The PS Vita will be the first time the popular "Uncharted" series has graced a platform outside of the PlayStation 3.

As for a release date, expect the end of this year with a price tag something near the $300 mark. While official Australian pricing doesn’t exist yet for the PS Vita, Sony has put the American pricing at $249 for the WiFi only model and $299 for the 3G/WiFi model. Whether Sony will follow suit with a similar price tag in Australia remains to be seen, but we can only hope.