Ben-DutkaAlthough Sony says they'd like sales to be a little higher, they're adamant about one primary point: As always, this is a marathon and not a sprint, and we have to at least get through one holiday cycle.
As cited by Videogamer , PlayStation UK boss Fergal Gara admitted that the Vita software "did dry up during the summer," but the new fall releases should help spur sales. Said Gara:
"We'd love for us to be further on. And the release schedule for Vita was rather like the release schedule for the industry this year, in that it did dry up during the summer. We had that incredible summer of sport and very little focus on gaming.
But the great news is that we have got the content in place. We have got the cash to invest in terms of marketing and retail to really ignite it this Christmas. To start judging a console before it has had its first Christmas is preposterous, really. And we are giving it everything we have got."
The Vita has broken the 1 million sales plateau in Japan but clearly, Sony wants (and maybe needs) more. As always in this industry, great games can be of great assistance, and the new portable will get Assassin's Creed III: Liberation , Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified , and a few other titles that hardcore gamers should really want, so…
If they advertise call of duty right they will see a big bump in sales, I'd say the same about assassins creed but ubisoft releasing it the same day as AC3 is stupid.
I agree, it's to bad ACIII Liberation didn't get a 2 week head start on ACIII. Rabid AC fans would have bought the Vita because they cannot wait 2 weeks. I still think ACIII Liberation will sell very well in the long run.
You two should be in marketing! You have to wonder why the people at Ubisoft (and Sony) didn't think of (or act on) this too.
Here's my take on this interesting situation. I believe they did think of that but decided to release them on the same day on purpose. I believe they are hoping that all gamers that beat ACIII or ACIII Liberation will be longing for more. If ACIII Liberation gets a 8 or higher review score average AC junkies will want to play it. Otherwise they will be waiting 1 more year for a new AC experience. Granted there will be awesome DLC release as well for example, The Tyranny of King Washington! I still think they are banking on the fact both ACIII games will sell each other.
Also they want to push the ACIII interconnectivity between PS3 and Vita while the game is hot.
Good point World, that is true!
Regardless, I hope ACIII: Liberation lives up to the franchise's reputation and is able to get some pretty decent sales and show other third party developers that quality AAA titles for the Vita are worth the time, money and effort!
If they show an ad with about four 18 year old high school guys sitting around a table in the school cafeteria or study room versing each other via ad hoc or wireless, and show this ad EVERYWHERE, then Vita will see a big spike in sales.
While I'm more interested in the Assassin's Creed 3 Liberation bundle, a CoD BlOps II Declass Vita bundle with a 4GB memory stick certainly will help drive sales. Let's just hope the marketing team has this all planned already.
Still costs too much and the only game I want so far is Gravity Rush. But yeah it's sad to see the Playstation haters out in force raging on Vita without giving it a chance.
I agree, still a bit too pricey, ontop of which you need to add in memory card prices. The library of games for the Vita is also lacking, imo, I'm still waiting on some RPG tittles, and monster hunter aswell…
I completely and respectively disagree with both of you. The price is right and Sony should be supported for taking such a risk to bring such and incredible handheld to market. The next year for Vita is going to be amazing. With people owning a IPhone 4S and then forking over $600 for IPhone 5 the Vita's price is just right. IMHO they didn't charge enough for what you get, but that's just me. Now with PS+ coming out for the Vita in November a 32GB card will go a long way!
This piece of device is not overpriced. It's a great handheld. All it needs is the games, but those are coming.
I agree with CrusaderForever and Killa Tequilla, I was pleasantly surprised with the Vita. It's well worth the price.
Last edited by tes37 on 10/11/2012 1:09:09 PM
I'm not saying it costs too much for what you get, but since you have to buy the memory cards and the games library is still slim I'm saying it's overpriced for me personally.
I've already got my moneys worth out of the little machine and my anticipated games list is double my constantly growing and lengthy backlog, so you won't hear me complain.
And I've never been a handheld buff before…
Last edited by PoopsMcGee on 10/11/2012 1:58:10 PM
Agreed! It's not overpriced! The only other portable option with that kind of gaming lineup is a top quality laptop and then you're looking at 1500$ or more!
@Phoenix Probably wont see Monster Hunter for the Vita due to that contract between Crapcom (sorry but I lost a lot of respect for Capcom this gen with many things they done this gen,like in disc DLC, etc) and Nintendo
Declassified looks like garbage. Hopefully it pushes some units though.
I'd liked to pick up the AC3 bundle sometime next month.
Not a big COD fan, but I'm hoping that was just some pre, pre alpha stuff that was shown…but then why show it at all?
@JimmyHandsome
I agree with you! I was in the hospital for 4 days healing my bleeding eyes! Like Simcoe said hopefully it was a pre-alpha version. I recently saw some updated picks and they have improved the graphics. However, with no Zombies and 4vs4 it is already a massive disappointment. I won't be picking this up until it's $19.99 or less. On the flip side I hope it does very well and sells a lot of Vitas.
Yikes, is it true that it is supposed to release the same day as the console version?!
lol @ the bleeding eyes comment. Yea, and I'm a CoD fan (not huge, but I do enjoy them for the most part) and this doesn't look appealing AT ALL. All the previews I've read have just reeked of disappointment by the reporters as well. Hopefully they make the game somewhat decent, but I do not have high hopes
Yeah, this is one that ISN'T on my anticipated games list…
Yeah, what Fergal Gara said, preposterous judging it before it haves its first Christmas. To show my appreciation I'll take AC3 Liberation 2 weeks sooner as an early Christmas present to my Vita. 🙂 … or not, don't go psycho(pronounced with the 'p')
I'm patiently waiting for everything too, so I can sift through it all and pick out what I want. I've got the major hurdle taken care of, the Vita's price tag(x2).
Tes if you want you can try buying one off Craigslist or something similar. I've recently moved to Canada and quite a few people have been selling these very cheaply. My friend bought his, after I convinced him, for 250. It included 8 games, the case, and a 16 gb card. So check around if you have to. Well, unless you are buying new to support Sony then I understand.
I'm not sure I understand your post. I've already bought 2 Vitas. If you meant something else, you may need to elaborate.
Oh crap! Lol I somehow read it wrong :. I thought you were looking for a vita to purchase.
I have a tendency to not be very clear sometimes, I blame it partly on my lack of typing skills. I always try to keep my posts as short as I possibly can because I forget half of what I want to say before I can get it typed. More than half of my comments I delete without submitting them.
No you are correct. I actually re-read it after you commented back and you did post it clearly. I think I read too quickly and maybe I skim or read it differently in my head. Weird on my end. Anyways I also can't wait for their library to grow even more. It is great how it is but of course it needs more. ACIII liberation will be my 1st fall purchase. I think I've spent too much already lol.
This price sensitivity over the cost of Vita makes zero sense to me when people are splurging $100s more on iCrap devices from Apple. The hardware inside Vita outclasses anything that iPad currently has to offer, and yet people bitch and moan about a $250 price? iPad 3 comes in at around $600, iPad 2 still runs $400. People routinely drop money on those, additional memory, expensive Apple accessories. So let's not keep on about the price when price is obviously not such a sensitive point for consumers. How about we talk about mind share and perception? The hate campaign against Sony that began about 10 years ago has had a *huge* impact, the PS3's launch and first couple of years amplified the hatred and negativity to the point where it's completely routine for PSP to be called a failure, for PS3 to be called a failure, and we all know what people say about Vita.
Sony can't compete on price when their price is already good, the biggest problem Sony has is that gamers in NA are largely sheep led by opinion shapers online and in the media. The loud and persistent negativity and hate aimed at Sony has altered the market perception of Sony and their products here permanently. It doesn't matter that Vita is excellent, and good value for money, that message can never be spread because it's immediately shot down as if it were complete non-sense.
Somehow, Sony has to find a way to change that perception and crush the negativity and hatred with more positive things. However so long as the Media has Sony in their sights as whipping boy, that's not gonna change.
I blame MS for that hate campaign against Sony. I despise that company and won't support their gaming efforts no matter what they produce. Their actions have brought more harm than good to the industry.
Well said Highlander, truly!
Yet they always complain about the vita game prices. They are so expensive! They may cost more but they are full sized games and not bite sized apps. Even the highest rated games on the app store would be poor on the vita. It aggravates me so much to have these apple fanatics complaining about price when they pay almost a grand for a piece of technology.
Completely agree with you. I find It very funny when the PSP or PS3 are called failures when they've sold 75+ and 67+ million units in the world. I really like my Vita (especially after the PS One games update) and I always thought It was a steal for the technology that has.
Hey guys, speaking of Vita games, Are you getting Persona 4 Golden?
Already preordered and paid off. Can't wait for persona 4. It looks even better than I remember. Well obvious upgrade an whatnot, but still it looks so awesome. The 20th if I'm not mistaken.
@Darxed
Yes, I cannot wait for P4G!! D1P if there ever was one! 🙂
I just hope Sony don't get too heavily burnt on this Vita adventure. In my humble opinion, the sooner they realize this is a dead end the better.
Of course they have to give it a fighting chance. But please don't burn too much money and effort on this one, Sony. Focus on the PS4!
Last edited by Beamboom on 10/11/2012 1:17:52 PM
Afraid I have to agree, the portable market is toast and I'd rather see them focus on consoles.
Sorry, but did you just step out of a time warp from a month after PSP launched? I only ask because that was exactly the sentiment that was aimed at the PSP which has since sold over 70 million devices.
I know that I am a gamer, and therefore I might see this a little differently from other consumers however, I carry a smartphone every day. I use it for net browsing, pictures, phone calls, texting (very rarely), GPS but not games. There are two reasons for that, the first is that the controls on the thing are absolutely crap, it's just a touch screen device at heart, though it does have a keyboard that slides out. even so, it's still pitiful in the controls department. However it's a more than adequate point and shoot camera, a decent phone, good web browser and GPS.
The second reason is that the games themselves are crap. Well, OK, they're not crap in their own right, but they are not the kinds of game I want to pay anything to play.
So my Smartphone is a very poor game playing device and the games themselves are not setting the heather alight. The vita on the other hand is bigger, has controls (buttons, joysticks, accelerometers, two touch surfaces, microphone and a camera), and has both a quad core CPU and GPU necessary to push console grade games on a handheld unit.
For gaming there is simply no comparison. As it happens I use my Vita both at home and away from home. It's battery lasts about 6 hours depending on what I play and how bright the screen needs to be. If I play a graphically intensive game on my phone two things happen swiftly, the casing heats up as the dual core CPU struggles to keep up and casts off a lot of heat, and at the same time it eats the battery in less than 2 hours. If I play games on my phone, the end result is a hand warmer with no charge, which is a poor proposition for making phone calls. So again, we come back to the Vita.
But that's me, a tech head and gamer for decades, talking. My son hasn't been a gamer that long, and has enjoyed playing certain games on his tablet and my wife's smartphone. However, in his opinion, the phone is crap compared to the Vita. He points to the graphics, the games, the sound and especially the games themselves. I understand the point that a lot of people make about carrying multiple devices, and yet I see people carrying both an iPhone and an iPad all the time. Or folks with an Android phone also carrying a tablet. If you're willing to carry two devices, why not make one a smartphone and the other a game/media player? Vita has a good sized screen, and yet is much smaller than those tablets, it has great controls that can't be matched by tablets. Yes, there are uses for tablets, but games on the move isn't one of them.
I just don't see any justification what so ever for this argument that Worlds summed up as the "portable market is toast".
It just is, times were different when PSP came out. The popularity of tablet, smartphone, and Nintendo platforms prove that alongside the shortening attention spans of humans, anything that goes with you on the go has to be pretty casual. If people want a full on gaming experience like Uncharted or Assassin's Creed they know the best place to have it is where they've spent their money already: a high cost home entertainment system.
What appeals to us older gamers or what technology and games are better are hardly the determining factor in what is successful and what isn't. I think it's safe to say the people who want a console experience on a handheld are a shrinking market.
I don't necessarily agree with portable gaming being toast, but World makes a strong point on today's trend. I know this may sound silly, but the general consumer may not care about high quality or "hardcore" games in a portable device. We can't just simply compare spec by spec, or price by price, and conclude which should be selling better. The world isn't always run by the best products, whether it'd be by price or specs.
You can clearly see this with the sales of Call of Duty, Nintendo Wii, and Apple Smartphones/Computers. Obviously, with Call of Duty, there are better quality shooters out there, but that doesn't matter cause it's selling like crazy. The Nintendo Wii wasn't close to being a true next gen console compared to PS3/360 yet it sold much better. As for Apple products, people are basically buying because of the brand. Even if it cost twice as much as a non-Apple brand like Sony or Samsung, it still sells well. You can call it gimmick or whatever, but when it becomes a trend, it becomes hard to stop or interrupt.
As it is now, the world is simply all about smartphones and tablets. The PSVita can be 4times as powerful as those devices and run at $200, but that still doesn't necessarily mean people will lean towards it. There's much more to it than just having the best specs, graphics, or price.
Vita is an awesome piece of tech with a good library. Comparing this with the ps3 or Xbox during its first year, the vita has the better lineup. I'm hopin the ps4 doesn't come out for a couple more years so the vita can build up steam.
I agree, and I am a huge graphics whore!!! I have always wanted life like graphics with amazing gameplay, story and control. I just cannot get past the fact the PS3 RULES!! The games that I have recently played are truly amazing. They can do so much with old hardware that it can almost not be believed. They are true artists with remarkable skill in their craft.
PS4 is going to be the moment of AWE!!!! I am learning that having touch screens on the controller not only enhances the game play but makes it more fun. I am wondering if Sony will do a Vita-esque controller for the PS4 or just offer the connectivity with the current Vita. My guess is that the Vita is going to go down in price to the point it will be a viable controller for the PS4. It completely puts the Wii U Tablet Controller to shame that's for sure. Or maybe a Vita 2 with more power. Being in the Sony camp is really a joy that's for sure!
I would think that they might make the vita as an official controller for the ps4. That would be really awesome if they do that. It is a better piece of technology than the WiiU tablet. The fact being that you can actually take it with you and play its own library of games. It is an awesome time to be a gamer.
Love my Vita. Screen is gorgeous. Controls are solid. System is solid. Build quality is great. Decent selection of Vita games…but the memory cards…Cut the price on those things already!
Yeah, that really is the only hang up for people. How can you not agree with cutting the prices of the memory cards. If Sony did this it may release the avalanche of sales they were hoping for.
I bought a 32GB card for $80 at Amazon a few months ago. If that's still too high for you, the only option is playing the waiting game or get lucky and find a used one.
They have sales every once in awhile but you have to constantly check online or even in stores. The walmart when I lived in Vegas, close to my house, was selling 32gb cards for $50. That was very surprising. Although, funnily enough it was a pricing error on their part but it didn't stop them from being sold out. Bought two, one for myself and one for my brother.
Last edited by sawao_yamanaka on 10/11/2012 1:49:41 PM
Just gotta keep watching for gaming deals, as I was able to pick up a 16GB card from amazon right after the Vita's launch for $49.
nice find