PlayStation Vita augmented reality comes in two very different flavors

Sony Computer Entertainment head of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida has a carpet with a little monkey in it. Except the monkey's virtual, and he's using a PlayStation Vita to make the little guy appear. Thus is the Vita's "Markerless AR," an augmented reality application that Yoshida demonstrated with a smile on-stage during Sony's TGS 2011 keynote this afternoon in Tokyo.

Yoshida also had a set of marker cards and "Wide Area" AR to boot, showing off a full-scale game played across a table with a handful of marker cards laid out to assist in the process. Yoshida's demonstration seems to indicate the the Vita will ship with a variety of AR applications when it launches this December in Japan -- perhaps even more than the handful of AR games that Nintendo's 3DS came packed with earlier this year. We'll do our best to nail down some more specifics this week as TGS continues.