Control Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 with your PS Vita.

.. And so it starts. Sony touched upon the potential of using the PlayStation Vita as a PS3 controller back at the Tokyo Game Show, but we never thought the functionality would amount to much. We especially never expected a third-party publisher to take advantage of the tech ahead of the platform holder, but that's exactly what Capcom's announced.

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 will let you use the PS Vita as an "Ultimate Controller" for the PS3 version of the game. This unlocks the PS Vita's touch-screen controls when playing the console release. If you're not keen on controlling all of the action using touch, you'll be able to simply assign special moves to the touch screen, giving you the best of both worlds.

It's probably not the best game to demonstrate the PS Vita's potential as a PS3 input device, but inspecting exactly how the feature works is going to be pretty interesting at least.

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3's set to launch on February 15th in North America, in order to coincide with Sony's "early bird" pre-order bundle.