Sony's Shuhei Yoshida has confirmed on Twitter that the forthcoming Sony PlayStation Vita will be region free. When asked if the new handheld would be region free, the president of Worldwide Studios at Sony Computer Entertainment said in reply "Yes it is". This means you'll be able to import games from the US or Japan and play them without a hitch!

PlayStation Vita launches in Japan on December 17. No release dates for other regions have yet been announced, but we'd hope it might be available in Australia just in time for Christmas.

Here are the specifications, in case you missed them:

• ARM Cortex-A9 core (4 core CPU)
• GPU SGX543MP4+
• External Dimensions Approx. 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5mm (width x height x depth) (tentative, excludes largest projection)
• Multi touch screen (capacitive type) - 5 inches (16:9), 960 x 544, Approx. 16 million colors, OLED
• 512MB RAM
• VRAM 128MB
• Rear Multi touch pad (capacitive type)
• Front camera, Rear camera (Frame rate 120fps@320x240, 60fps@640x480))
• Built-in stereo speakers
• Built-in microphone
• Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer), Three-axis electronic compass
• Built-in GPS (3G/Wi-Fi model only)
• Wi-Fi location service support
• Mobile network connectivity (3G/Wi-Fi model only)
• IEEE 802.11b/g/n (n = 1x1)(Wi-Fi) (Infrastructure mode/Ad-hoc mode)
• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR (A2DP/AVRCP/HSP)
• PlayStation Vita card slot
• Memory Card slot
• SIM card slot (3G/Wi-Fi model only)
• Multi-use port (for USB data communication, DC IN, Audio (Stereo Out / Mono In), Serial data communication),
• Headset jack (Stereo mini jack) (for Audio (Stereo Out / Mono In))