Slim PS Vita hits North America this spring with Borderlands 2

Slim PS Vita hits North America this spring with Borderlands 2

$200 bundle includes system that’s 20 percent slimmer and 15 percent lighter.

Matt Swider – Feb 10, 2014 7:10 pm | 49

Sony announced today that the new slimmer and lighter PlayStation Vita available elsewhere in the world is headed to North America this spring. The handheld will be part of a Borderlands 2 bundle costing $199.99. Previously, the company skipped over North America when it released the PS Vita Slim in Japan in October and then launched it in the UK last week.

“Many of you have probably seen some of the announcements come from Europe and Japan,” John Koller, Sony’s head of hardware marketing for PlayStation, said at a press event attended by Ars. “We’re very proud to bring it here [to North America] as well.”

This Wi-Fi-only “PS Vita 2000” (a moniker that comes from its official model number PCH-2000) replaces the original handheld with one that’s about 20 percent slimmer and 15 percent lighter. It packs a 1GB internal storage capacity and expanded battery life that lasts anywhere from four to six hours, besting the three to five hours that early adopters of the Vita had to deal with. That extra battery life is partly thanks to the original Vita’s OLED screen being replaced by a high-definition LCD screen.

“We like to iterate. We like to talk about the fact that the systems tend to evolve,” said Koller. “The Vita evolves in many of the same ways that we’ve evolved other platforms in the past. This one I think is really important, though. This [slim PS Vita] makes it easier to play. It’s a slimmer form function, and it’s just easier to hold in your hand. The LCD is brilliant.”

In addition to the base game, the Borderlands 2 Limited Edition PlayStation Vita Bundle will come with six DLC packs and an 8GB PS Vita memory card. Though the Vita 2000 is available in numerous colors in Japan, North America will only get a black system.

With Sony announcing that one in three Vita owners also owns a PS4, the company is trying its best to tout cross-play between its new console and handheld, helping to explain why cross-play compatible Borderlands 2 was picked as the pack-in game. There are 250,000 gamers who have used remote play between the systems, Koller said, and Sony hopes to grow that figure so that more of the 4.2 million people who bought PS4 around the globe can experience it too.