PlayStation Vita can double up as a PS3 controller, possible Nintendo Wii U competitor?

It’s no secret that Sony is hoping that the PlayStation Vita will be a serious rival and competitor to Nintendo’s 3DS portable gaming console. However it seems that perhaps Sony is eyeing the Nintendo Wii U as well and hopes that the Vita will be able to rival Nintendo’s upcoming offering.

For those unfamiliar with the Nintendo Wii U, you can check out our in-depth preview here. Essentially it’s Nintendo’s upcoming gaming console (to be released in 2012) that will come with a rather unique controller that will allow the gamer to continue playing their games via the screen onboard the controller in case someone wants to watch the television.

Sony is looking to achieve something similar with the PlayStation Vita by allowing the handheld console to double up as a PlayStation 3 controller as well. Sony Europe’s R&D manager Phil Rogers had this to say:

“What could you do with all of this?” Rogers asked a room of developers and Eurogamer. “Here’s a few boring technical ideas: you could drive a display from a PS3 game, for example.

“PS3 can send data down to Vita and Vita can display it. You could use the unique features [of Vita] – gyroscope, touch front and back – as a control device for a PS3 game.

“You can run software on both devices and use the network to sync the game states. And that’s pretty good, because you then have the processing power of PS3 doing that work, Vita [doing] fancy graphics – however you want to do it. You’re not sacrificing the PS3’s CPU to be able to have a rich experience on Vita.”

Sounds like Sony is planning to give Nintendo a run for their money, but I guess we will have to wait for both the Wii U and the PlayStation Vita to come out before any side-by-side comparisons can be done, but for now it sounds pretty good.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gaming
Tags: 3DS (Nintendo), nintendo wii u, PlayStation 3, playstation vita