The PS Vita officially starts to sell in a few hours in Japan. Some of us have already tried it, others among us (devs) already own it, but I expect tomorrow to be a big sale day for most consumer electronics stores. The Wifi model is already out of stock before even going on sale officially, while it seems the 3G model still has some stock in the big shops. This tells me two things: the Vita is going to be a huge success at launch, but customers are not buying into the “pay a 3G data plan dedicated to gaming” business idea by Sony. Since in Japan you can have a generic pocket wifi for about 4’000 yens per months (which you can use not only for your gaming device, but for any other wifi-enabled hardware), I don’t think an offer at 5000 yens for 100 hours of connection sounds very tempting…

An ad for the PSVita in Tokyo. It says "only 1 day left before the sale". It also shows the prices for the Wifi and 3G Model. A sticker on the Wifi price says "All wifi models have been preordered and are out of stock". An additional text says "This device cannot use the PSP UMD Discs". The Yellow text at the bottom announces that there are 20 launch titles

But I’m thinking some people will buy the 3G model because they won’t want to wait for the next batch of Wifi models 🙂

On a related note, and in half-reply to my own interrogation a few days ago about the new memory stick format, Arnaud Gueydan, in charge of the hardware section at Sony France declared (when he was asked about why they came up with a new proprietary format): “we’ve had two types of experiences with piracy, a very bad one with the PSP, and a good one with the PS3, we are trying to find a good balance” (source)