Sony thought about ditching PS Vita's twin-analogue sticks in favour of a 5.5-inch display with integrated controls

In a recent interview on PlayStation Blog, Sony revealed that it almost ditched the PS Vita's twin-analogue sticks during the console's prototyping stage, in spite of their absence being a popular gripe with the company's PSP.

"We also built a prototype with flat slide pads, a bit like what you have on your laptop, but it just didn't feel responsive enough for gaming and we learned that you need that physical response of tilting the stick to feel like you have total control," Tokashi Sogabe, the director of Sony's product design team, said.

"For me as a designer [analogue sticks] have presented a huge challenge, partly because it's much easier to design products with entirely flat surfaces."

According to Sogabe, Sony's design team "discussed the position of the analogue sticks at great length".

"I didn't feel that they were in the perfect position from a design perspective but Worldwide Studios were adamant that they were in the best position for comfortable gameplay, and in the end they won out on that point," he stated.

Don't stop me now

Naturally, several other control and design concepts were rejected during the PS Vita's prototyping stage, including a 5.5-inch display that housed the handheld's controls.

"There was a great deal of discussion and we even talked about using a 5.5 inch screen with all of the buttons included on it, but that had a negative impact on the operability of the device and the idea was abandoned," Sogabe explained.

A clamshell and a PSPgo-esque design were also (thankfully) rejected.

"When we started work on PS Vita, the shape we had in mind was very similar to the final product, but in the testing phase we tried many different designs, including a sliding system [similar to PSP go] and a clamshell."