PS Vita (and Walkman) designer Takashi Sogabe would like future PS Vita models to be thinner than they currently are. The original Vita was going to be slimmer than it is, but the engineers couldn’t make it happen.
“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 revealed to CVG. “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 analog 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, but because there are a lot of antennae in the body, we couldn’t use metal.”
It’s pretty interesting to learn about the practicalities of console design. I can’t speak for any of it, but it’s cool to know nonetheless!
Next PS Vita ‘could be thinner’, says designer [CVG]
