Play Station Vita’s 3G locked to AT&T

AT&T has released that it holds exclusivity over carrying 3G signals from PlayStation Vitas when the portable game system releases here in the United States.

AT&T has confirmed that all PlayStation Vita 3G units sold in the U.S. will be locked to its own network, meaning owners can’t use other SIM cards with it.only AT&T SIM cards will work in the handheld.

All international GSM SIM and T-Mobile in the U.S. will give an error when turned on.

The PlayStation Vita will be released next month all around the world, with potential customers being able to choose between a standard-priced Wi-Fi model or a slightly more expensive 3G one.

 pricing is set at an iPad-like $14.99 per month for 250MB of bandwidth or $24.99 for 2GB. You’ll be paying that price for multiplayer gaming without a WiFi point, location-based services, and social networking on the go. The plan month-to-month, meaning that you can pay as you go instead of paying an automatic subscription fee.

Still, $15 a month for what amounts to access to Twitter and a competitor to the 3DS’ StreetPass functionality isn’t the greatest value for money that portable gaming has ever seen. Then again, Vita owners who’ve seen prices for games or the proprietary memory cards aren’t the least surprised.

Although the device is carrier-locked, Sony revealed that device will at least be region-free, meaning Japanese games will work on American handhelds, and every other combination. Glenn Lurie from AT&T told consumer electronics blog The Verge that AT&T worked with Sony during the system’s development process on the 3G modules for the system. It also helped craft connectivity rules in the Vita SDK, presumably to suit AT&T’s network needs. Lurie explained that the SDK contributions expedite certification (it isn’t said with whom, whether that’s the FCC or Sony’s own app store) and avoid apps that harm the network. The telecoms heavyweight has also been testing 3G-equipped units since early fall 2011, as much as six months ahead of the console’s US release.

With a release date in late February for the U.S. and Europe, the Vita will run on an ARM Cortex A9 quad-core processor and be powered by a quad-core PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU.

Featuring a 5-inch capacitive multitouch OLED screen (with 16 million colors), the device will be 7.16 by 0.73 by 3.28 inches. Furthermore, the Vita has 512MB memory and 128MB VRAM in its graphics processor.