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New PS Vita has micro-USB charging

Sony has ditched the proprietary charging cable for its next model of PS Vita, heading to a standard micro-USB charger instead.

Nic Healey Senior Editor / Australia
Nic Healey is a Senior Editor with CNET, based in the Australia office. His passions include bourbon, video games and boring strangers with photos of his cat.
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Nic Healey

Sony has always been fond of its proprietary products, from MemoryStick, to MiniDisc, to UMD.

The micro-USB port on the PCH-2000. (Credit: Shuhei Yoshida via Twitter)

But proprietary cables have always been especially frustrating, as anyone who's ever lost a non-standard charging cable can attest. How quickly a much-loved device can become a silent brick, while you scour online retailers for a replacement charger.

The current PS Vita has a proprietary cable for charging, but a recent tweet from Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida says that's all about to change.

Yoshida tweeted a photo of the PCH-2000 model of Vita, which was announced just before the Tokyo Game Show last month.

The photo showed a standard micro-USB port and, according to the translation from Polygon, the tweet says, "You'll be glad: when using a PS Vita 2000, it can be charged [using a] smartphone micro USB".

There's a caveat of course: that model of Vita has only been announced for Japan, with no current plans for a release in other regions.