The PlayStation Vita is launching on December 17 in Japan, while those of us in North America still don't know when it will be appearing on store shelves here. Sony has announced that 26 games will be available for the system at launch in Japan, along with a wide array of peripherals... including proprietary memory cards. Keep in mind, the system has no built-in memory, so if you'd like to use downloadable games, movies, or music, you're going to need to buy into Sony's proprietary format.

Battery life has also been shared via a press release, and if you didn't like the 3DS in this regard you'll be just as happy with the Vita.

Here are the sizes of the memory sticks that will be available, next to the price in Yen and then an approximate value in dollars. Buckle up.

Memory Card 4GB ¥2,200 $29

Memory Card 8GB ¥3,200 $42

Memory Card 16GB ¥5,500 $71

Memory Card 32GB ¥9,500 $124

Those prices are something else, and show the value of using your own proprietary formats; if Sony allowed the system to use standard memory in its system, you could buy a 32GB stick for around a third of that price, if not less. Depending on the size of the more expansive Vita games with high-quality textures, we could be looking at a substantial premium if you download the games, after taking into account the high cost of the memory you'll need to buy for storage.

Sony has also released information on the system's battery life:

Game: Approx. 3-5 hours

Video: Approx. 5 hours

Music (in stand-by mode): Approx. 9 hours

This is with the screen at the default brightness, Bluetooth turned off, and headphones used for audio. This isn't great, but the Vita has some tremendously powerful hardware running under the hood to push the level of graphics, so that's not unexpected. We'll be buying a third-party battery pack.

None of this is exactly surprising, but it remains disappointing.