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The PS Vita‘s success as a games system is far from secure, but Sony has just hinted that it might make tablets and smart phones using the Vita operating system.
Sony’s yet-to-be-anointed president and CEO Kazuo Hirai told reporters that the company designed the OS to be expandable to other devices, The Verge reports, quoting AV Watch. Sony’s deputy president then said smart phone apps would be coming soon to Vita, via PlayStation Suite.
Hirai told reporters that we shouldn’t forget Vita OS as a mobile platform, not just focussed on gaming. Sony Computer Entertainment’s senior vice president Yoshio Matsumoto then said: “if you’re asking if we’ve made it [Vita’s OS] in a way that’s expandable, so that it’s possible to apply to smart phones and tablets on top of achieving the high responsiveness we need for gaming devices — it is possible.”
He added: “that doesn’t mean that we’re applying it to smart phones and tablets at this point in time, but it’s been designed with expandability in mind.”
But why would Sony design it with “expandability in mind” and then not act on it? Sounds to us like it’s only a matter of time until we see a Vita range of smart phones and tablets. The company did just buy out Ericsson from its mobile side, after all, and new boss Hirai, who takes over on 1 April, is from the PlayStation side of things at Sony.
Sony Ericsson incurred losses of £206m last year, so Sony will doubtless want to do everything it can to turn round its ailing phone business.
Would you buy a Vita handset or tablet? And would Sony be right to plough its own furrow, or should it stick with Android? Let us know in the comments below, or on our Facebook page.
