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For lucky gamers in Japan, the launch of the PlayStation Vita is drawing ever closer, bringing details around pricing and game distribution. For starters, Sony seems to be trying to right the ship after unfortunate mistakes were made when launching its all-digital PSP Go, most notably the lack of an option to download games they bought on UMD for free, or at least at a discount. It seems Sony's changing its tactics this time: developtment chief Yoshio Matsumoto recently mentioned that PSP UMD owners would be able to download those games at "a special price" — so you may still pay for the same game twice, but just not quite as much.
Additionally, companies are beginning to post Vita game prices, albeit in Japanese Yen. Hard copies of Uncharted: Golden Abyss will retail for ¥5,980, while the downloads will come in at ¥4,900 — that's $78 and $63 at the current exchange rate. That said, US pricing will almost certainly be lower; Kotaku estimates pricing of $59 for the memory card version, and $49 for the download. It seems Vita games may cost a good deal more than most PSP games at launch, but at least this time there's a price incentive to going digital. That said, the PSP downloadable library never matched the UMD library, so we'll see if Sony can really follow through on expanding its digital marketplace.
