Sony upping ante with mobile gaming console

NEW YORK – Sony is intensifying its push in handheld gaming with a gadget aimed at hardcore players looking for something with a bit more punch than “Angry Birds,” “Words With Friends” and other smartphone pastimes.

The PlayStation Vita, already available in Japan, debuts in the U.S. and Europe on Wednesday. A basic, Wi-Fi version will retail at $250, while one that can access 3G cellular networks will go for $300 plus monthly service fees from AT&T.

Sony Corp. is promoting the device with a $50 million marketing blitz, said Jack Tretton, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Tretton acknowledges it won’t be an easy sell.

People have grown accustomed to playing games on handheld devices that also make phone calls, shoot videos, connect to the Internet, play songs and send text messages. Why buy a gadget that does only one thing?

“Ultimately, if you consider yourself a gamer, you are going to find yourself migrating up the food chain to dedicated gaming consoles and the Vita,” Tretton said.

As a device, the Vita is sleek and powerful, melding the console-like controls that gamers are used to with touch screens common in mobile devices. Its dual analog sticks are a first for a handheld device and a must-have for shooter games played from a first-person perspective. Not only does the Vita’s main screen respond to touch, but it also has a touch screen in the back that offers gamers an entirely new way of controlling play.

The Vita has a 5-inch screen, front- and rear-facing cameras and a quad-core processor, which is used in the fastest tablet computers. The Vita also connects to the PlayStation 3, so players for the first time can play the same game regardless of whether they are using a console or a handheld system.

Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Baird, said he believes the market has “largely moved beyond this type of experience.”

“I think the dedicated handheld game market is very challenging,” he said. “The odds over the long term are stacked against the Vita.”

Another handheld system, the Nintendo 3DS, has been a disappointment. The gadget, which lets players see 3-D images without special glasses, hasn’t sold as well as expected and was one of the reasons Nintendo reported a net loss in the last nine months of 2011. Though the machine is starting to see sales pick up following a price cut, Nintendo last month lowered its forecast for 3DS sales.

As of December, Nintendo has sold more than 165 million of its handheld DS devices worldwide, including more than 15 million of the 3DS. Sony, meanwhile, has sold 75.5 million PlayStation Portable devices, the first version of which went on sale in 2005 in the U.S. and the year before in Japan. Sony plans to continue selling the Portable machine.