It didn’t take long for Amazon to capitalize on the North American reveal of the PlayStation Vita. The online retailer is now accepting pre-orders for the PS Vita for its Wi-Fi and 3G models.

Sony’s NGP has been officially named PlayStation Vita. The rumors leading up to today’s E3 2011 press conference were dead on. As I’ve said before, the name doesn’t matter. What does matter is how accessible the handheld is, and how much support it gets from third-party developers. Along with the Vita announcement Sony’s Kaz Hirai mentioned a few new features as well.

When rumors initially started started to surface about the successor to the PSP, we all instinctively started calling it the PSP2. The title made sense considering how Sony brands its home consoles. We’ve gone from PS1 to PS2 and PS3, so why wouldn’t PSP2 be next in line. Even though it seemed like a no-brainer, Sony never uttered the words PSP2. It has always referred to the handheld as the NGP or Next Generation Portable. What gives?

E3 may be two months away, but the news is starting to trickle in for the event. Sony wants to really make sure you make time to watch or read a live-blog for its conference this year, so make sure you’re not doing anything at 5pm PST on June 6, 2011. Seriously, make sure you’ve got an hour or so free. Maybe use one of those Windows or Mac gadgets to put a post-it on your virtual desktop…

I bet you were hoping that Sony would finally wise up and just use something like an SD card or microSD card for the NGP, but no. It’s already been confirmed that the NVG is the way to go for the NGP. If you happened to be at the 2011 Game Developers Conference, then you got to hear first hand a bit more about Sony’s latest portable’s memory card.

Sony is going to have two varieties of NVG card at launch, with the only difference between the two being storage size…

Sony has entered into an agreement with Skyhook Wireless to provide its brand of technology to the NGP (PSP2). Skyhook Wireless’ technology enables location-based features that could become quite useful in future NGP applications. Skyhook utilizes a mixture of Wi-Fi, GPS and cell phone tower triangulation technologies to find where a device is located within 30 meters of its actual location.

Who’s ready for a rumor? Okay, here’s a good one. Supposedly, the price for the NGP (PSP 2) is already in GameStop’s systems. Supposedly, a photo of said price was taken by someone at a GameStop store and was leaked onto the internet via the GameStop Facebook page. The image shows upcoming handheld system information, lists accurate release dates and prices for both 3DS models (March 27, 2011, $249.99) and then says the Sony PSP NGP will be out January 1, 2012 and cost $299.99…

Dear Sony,

I do enjoy playing the games you make and playing on the systems you create. With some of the best hardware per gaming device out there, I believe you can seriously compete in the handheld gaming market. You do stand a chance against the DS and iPod Touch.

If you stop this craziness with the non-standard, proprietary memory cards.

One of the NGP’s (PSP2) nicer features is the fact that it’s backwards compatible with PSP games. The thing is, there’s no UMD drive. Which means that the NGP will initially only be able to work with PSP games that are already on the PlayStation Store. But, Sony’s hoping to offer another alternative.

Sony talked with Gigazine and said that it hopes to rerelease PSP games on memory cards…

Just so you have it all in one place, we have gathered the photos of Sony’s NGP (Next Generation Portable) handheld game system and put them in a photo gallery for you. Scroll down and you can also watch the fanciful video (SD and HD) teasing the NGP as well. The next PSP handheld gaming system, currently codenamed NGP (for “next generation portable”), was announced today (January 27, 2011) at the PlayStation Meeting 2011 in Japan.