For gamers who are in love with their PS Vita’s there might be hope for the future.
Sony has filed a patent for what looks to be a new portable handheld system, and it looks like it has taken quite a few design cues from the Nintendo Switch.
NeoGAF user ponpo is the one who spotted the patent. It was apparently filed in 2015, but has just recently become public.
It certainly doesn’t look as elegant as a PS Vita, but it does trade sleek design for a greater ergonomic feel. What it does look like is some sort of tablet device that’s sitting in a controller mount. It actually looks most similar to the Gamepad Controller for the Razer Edge Pro Gaming Tablet. While the tablet might also resemble a phone, the patent photos suggest very little if any parts are removable.
This patent comes as a major surprise to Sony handheld fans. Especially after head of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, confirmed in 2015 that with the advent of mobile phones, the climate for dedicated gaming handhelds was not healthy.
While the PS Vita is beloved for its treasure trove of obscure Japanese titles, it hasn’t sold particularly well. Since its release in late 2011 in Japan, the PS Vita has sold a total of 15.25 million units. That’s a far cry from Sony’s previous handheld, the PlayStation Portable, which sold 80.82 million units. Even compared to the Nintendo 3DS, with 63.82 million units sold, the PS Vita has not kept pace.
If Sony were to release this handheld, it would also invariably be compared to Nintendo’s next console/handheld hybrid, the Switch. With so much positive buzz and excitement around the Switch, it may be hard for Sony to carve out a slice of an already highly competitive mobile market pie.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”