PS Vita Designer, Tokashi Sogabe, Discusses Designing The Vita And Internal Battles

Sony have released an interview with the PS Vita designer Tokashi Sogabe. Tokashi Sogabe had previously designed the Walkman, Vaio Notebooks, and the PS3 Slim. He has revealed some secrets from development of the PS Vita. he talks about some issues he had designing the Vita, some of which were his own doing like trying to have it all made out of Metal (which means the 3G+GPS wouldn't have worked).


His first reveal is that they did try out a 5.5 inch screen that had all the buttons on it, but that idea was abandoned due to how it affected operating the PSV. one of the biggest issues faced when designing the PSV was the Analogue sticks.  he reveals they tried out laptop touch pads but they didn't feel responsive enough. he says he preferred them from a design point of view but Sony Worldwide Studios decided to go with them and where to place them.

Another conflict he had was with the engineers. as a designer he said he preferred the device to be as thin a possible, and this final model is a little bigger than what he wanted. ultimately it was up to the engineers to point out that having it bigger meant a bigger battery and more.

Source: USA Playstation Blog