Next PS Vita 'could be thinner', says designer

[wraggster]

PS Vita (and Sony Walkman) designer Takashi Sogabe has told CVG that he'd like to make future PS Vita iterations thinner than the launch model.
Speaking in a round-table interview at Sony Computer Entertainment's Japanese HQ last month, Sogabe, who runs the Corporate Design Centre, also said he'd wanted to use metal rather than plastic materials when developing the system."Speaking not only about the PS Vita, we always have a battle between engineers and designers. The original design of the PS Vita, for example, was very much thinner than the current retail product," he said. "From a designer's point of view, thinner is better-looking, but the engineers wanted to put all the features in.
"Maybe it will become thinner in the future, but the engineers would have to come up with a means to do that. The main effort for me was to make this product happen. The buttons and analogue sticks were perhaps not in the best position from a design point of view, but we felt they were the best solution from a publisher's point of view.
"As a designer, I wanted to use metal rather than plastic," he added, "but because there are a lot of antennae in the body, we couldn't use metal."
You can read the full interview with Sogabe here, in which he also discusses the challenges involved in designing Vita's dual analogue sticks.
Are you picking up a Vita at launch and if so, which model are you going to plump for? Cast your eyes over our PS Vita review, if you haven't already, and don't forget the PS Vita release dateis less than a month away now.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...says-designer/

[Fonixx]

Obviously it had to be done to shed weight and size but when the Psp 2000 lost the 1000s metal chasis the thing just became too fragile and had no chance of getting that casual or kid gamer market, also there's that Piano black colour that absorbs fingerprints like a sponge, and the Vita has exactly the same problem being so Hi-Tech and fragile means it's only ever gonna get the adult & Hardcore gamers which most spend their spare time now on Smartphones, so give it 2 years and Vita will almost be the same place Psp is now.