Vita will offer "long term" piracy protection, says Sony

Measures put in place for game cartridges for PlayStation Vita will project the handheld "long term" from piracy, SCE WWS US boss Scott Rhode has said.

Having seen PSP be riddled down with piracy issues, Sony made sure anti-piracy plans were put in place from the get go of the system's design, Rhode told Gamasutra.

"That was front and center in the early specs of this machine. 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."

Rhode continued: "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."

Vita launches in the UK, Europe and US today, with an Australian release tomorrow.