If you were hoping to be living la Vita loca this holiday season, now might be a good time to start planning a little shopping trip to Japan. This is because Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai has today been quoted as saying that the portable console will not be available in the US or Europe until "early next year." Japan, he hastens to add, is still on track for the "holiday season" release window we've been hearing since the PlayStation Vita's first announcement under the NGP moniker. To be fair, there was always a decent chance of the Vita's international release slipping into 2012, but now we've got an authoritative source confirming that gloomy forecast. While Kaz wouldn't be drawn into disclosing any specific dates, he has added an extra bit of intel to the story by rebuffing suggestions that the Vita will be experiencing a pre-release price drop to better match up with Nintendo's aggressive price cut of the 3DS. So we're still looking at a $249 quad-core portable console -- alas, it'll just have to be on our 2012 wishlist.

Source: AP