Sony Confident the Vita Will Offer “Long Term” Piracy Protection

The PSP rather notoriously suffered from a serious piracy problem, but Sony says their newly launched handheld, the PlayStation Vita, won't face a similar fate, as its propietary media formats will help to provide "long-term" protection against pirates.

"That was front and center in the early specs of this machine,"  the company's Scott Rohde told Gamasutra. "We needed to have something that would combat piracy from day one, and that's why the cards that you can purchase for the games are in their own proprietary format."

Whereas the PSP supported the widely-used Memory Stick Duo, the Vita utilizes a proprietary format for both game cartidges and its removable storage. While that makes them a bit pricier than more open alternatives, the move means Sony will have an easier time keeping pirated software and firmware hacks off of the system.

"It's something that we felt was completely necessary to make sure that people could not pirate these games. I mean, it's a custom security solution on each one of these cartridges. That is something that we are confident will protect us from piracy for the long term."

The PlayStation Vita launches today in North America, Europe, and Australia.