Sony’s Game Design Chief, Shuhei Yoshida, talks UMD Passport, Vita security

Shuhei Yoshida, Game Design Chief at Sony, doesn’t seem to be afraid of Nintendo or the competition from the 3DS in this interview with Wired during the Dice Summit. Yoshida had a lot to say about the Vita, which launched today in the US.

We already knew UMD Passport wasn’t coming to the US, but Yoshia explains why: because the demand for UMD games, and games for the portable systems in general, is much higher in Japan, where the prices are also much higher.

“Lots of people who are interested in trying Vita are also interested in playing PSP games that they might purchase before Vita comes out, and will not necessarily choose the digital version,” Yoshida said. “When the games are already sold at a lower price in the U.S. we see less value in introducing that kind of system.”

And their fear of piracy running as rampant on the Vita as it did on the PSP? “There will always be the effort by those hackers. They are so smart, they’re sharp. But when you compare what happened with PSP to PS3, there are some hacking activities on PS3 but we’ve been doing much better. Our teams in Japan learned a lot and are applying that knowledge to fortifying PS Vita. So hopefully we will have much stronger protection on PS Vita.”

He also talked about the PlayStation Suite, which Sony is “definitely” looking to add sometime this year, to both the Vita and to Android devices.

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Nicole Kline is Warp Zoned's Senior Editor. She first began preparing for the job by climbing a milk crate to play Centipede in an arcade. You can find her on PSN under the name toitle or you can email her at nicole AT warpzoned DOT com.