Ben-DutkaI hate to sound like a broken record, but this is what happens when software support is seriously lacking.
As part of Sony's fiscal third-quarter report , the electronics giant has reported that sales expectations for the PlayStation Vita have dropped significantly.
Year-over-year revenue fell 15% due to lower-than-anticipated hardware and software sales, and Sony is now expecting to sell 3 million fewer Vitas in the fiscal year. Sales of the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2 were down to 6.8 million from 7.4 million and software sales came in at 61.7 million, a drop from 2011's 68.7 million. The PSP and Vita were also combined in the reports and this actually saw a small increase, from 2.4 million to 2.7 million. However, that's not really a good sign as the PSP does continue to sell and the Vita should've caused the combined number to rise drastically.
But "rising drastically" hasn't really been the Vita's MO so far. The company now predicts to sell only 10 million Vita units before the end of the financial year on March 31, but Sony does promise to support the portable with "more software." Yes, do that. Some time soon, please.
Lastly, February 20 looms…
I love my vita, but its no secret sony made plenty of mistakes. I have only seen a handfull of other people with them.
Still though, I hope it starts doing better. It is an awesome system!
It really does need some new games… Although i am having fun with it bc i'm playing the hell outta playstation All- Stars on it and CoD Declassified and Assassin Creed liberation… And I just recently finished gravity rush and uncharted golden Abyss So i'm really not dissappointed at all with the system… Then again i only play it at work on my breaks
Hopefully Sony is talking with third party developers about games exclusive to Vita Only. I see no point to buy a vita if I can play a game on a system I already own.
but, but it's a PS3 in your hands. YOUR HANDS. The point right?
I suspect Sony will have to find ways to bolster it's value. Perhaps the Feb 20th announcement will include a reveal that PS4 games will be able to stream, via the Gakai deal, to Vita owners… and I mean stream via PSN and NOT an existing PS4 that you may not own yet.
Sony may be in a position where spending lots of money on expensive first party games would just cause them to bleed more money on an seemingly abandoned platform.
A solution I think would be to keep the Vita selling at a profit by NOT slashing it's price very far, and bolster it's value through allowing access to it's parent content, namely high production PS3 and PS4 experiences, via streaming. This way the Vita ship may not continue to look like a black hole of wasted money on exclusive content that can't reap a profit. This could help improve the sales of sony's software without having to bleed out a ton in exclusive Vita content. just a thought 😉
Last edited by Temjin001 on 2/7/2013 12:32:34 PM
I have wondered why ps3 psn games aren't playable on the Vita. I buy portables not to play on the go but for the exclusives like I own a psp because Crisis Core,Dissidia Birth By Sleep,Trails In The Sky etc and I love video games so I never limit myself to certain systems. My rule is if you have more than 2 games Im getting it.
Sometimes I believe Vita was released too soon alot of important features were not available at launch and I think Sony didnt want N3DS to get too far ahead.
Sony should start new series on the system instead of relying on Uncharted,Killzone etc because didnt those series start off on PS3.
Last edited by bebestorm on 2/7/2013 1:08:08 PM
All games should be crossbuy, not just Sony. Saw Alien Breed on PSN, got hugely excited only to find 2 identical copies, ended up buying other things and getting neither….
ya'd think with the lunatic craze over monster hunter that helped sell a feck ton of psp's in japan ,sony would of had the foresight to secure a sequel using all the bells and whistles the vita has to offer for the new handhelds launch.
I know sony doesn't buy exclusives that much but at the start of a new handhelds life cycle i think its a must to have at least 4 big names titles to entice buyers,uncharted was the only eye catching game at the vita's launch but it was not enough to make me splash out the dough for one.
This ^
I really don't understand why there hasn't been a monster hunter game for Vita yet. Monster Hunter Vita would give Sony a huge boost in hardware sales. At least in Japan anyway…
I could have sworn I saw articles around a year ago saying a Monster hunter was in the making, expected launch this winter. Then it went all silent.
But I'm sure there has at least been rumours about Monster Hunter coming to Vita.
… And here it is:
http://www.destructoid.com/sony-exec-monster-hunter-vita-scheduled-for-this-year-220632.phtml
Almost exactly a year ago, too. 🙂
That kind of move would take marketing forethought.
I love my Vita. I think it's a kickass handheld, and I'll defend it's capabilities to anyone… but it's in desperate need of games.
A new Valkyria Chronicles would sure be nice. One that plays more like the original PS3 version.
God of War? COO and GOS were great on PSP. That proves there'd be a place for Kratos on the Vita.
I would like to buy a PS Vita but like everybody else has said, there's not enough software to warrant a purchase. Sure, it's a nice piece of technology but until they have a deep software library, it's not worth the price. People would rather play their games on an iPhone or reasonable facsimile nowadays as it's cheaper to get games for it. Sony must get more 3rd party support and bring more of their franchises on the darn thing.
That's the THIRD time Sony has revised Vita sales downward and it's only been out for a little over a year.
Last edited by Excelsior1 on 2/7/2013 2:20:44 PM
Well sales certainly aren't going to get better with the announcement of the PS4, everyone's going to save their money for the next gen.
Sony can't launch things properly can they? Drop that price if you want this sale.
I'm optimistic with the PS4 though. So far so good, imo.
Had mine since launch and it makes my brain hurt with how Sony has once again screwed up. There should be twice as many Vitas out there now than what there is. Crappy marketing, too many "big games" that turned out to be average at best (many well below) and a pricing scheme with memory cards that completely blew up in their faces just as we knew it would when they announced the prices. The WiFi models should have came with a 4GB card, that alone probably would have got a lot more people on board. Better marketing would have helped a lot also and there's still no true "killer app" even announced let alone released and in typical modern Sony fashion they let a major franchise (in Japan anyway) go to their competition. Naturally you can't forget Nintendo's bungling of the 3DS launch and months following that lead to their taking some desperate measures to get people to buy it. That IMO had an effect as well.
As for the PSP sales, so many people are still buying it because it's cheaper and I'm willing to bet a lot of those sales are people only interested in applying CFW.
Sony has to get some system selling games onto the Vita. At the moment, the majority of what is on it are companion games to PS3 siblings, or remakes or PSP games running under emulation. There are a few great exceptions, I thought that Gravity Rush was extremely good and precisely the kind of thing that the Vita needs more of.
But the Vita is caught in a juxta-position. On the one hand it's highly capable, has all the features of a small tablet device, and can run all the PS Mobile games/apps you want. It could be home to a thriving micro-app population with all sorts of games and tools available – as is the case with Android and Apple devices (vita would not be on the same scale of course). But at the same time the system is built as a gaming device with 'full size' games in mind. Look a the 100 App limit on the user interface. It was never designed to be home to screeds of small apps and games.
But Vita is right there in that space between hand held gaming and sub-7-inch tablets. The problem is that it doesn't know which one it wants to be, and instead of blending the best of both worlds, it instead acts like a dual personality, where trying to be one thing, prevents it from being the other.
There is still time and an opportunity for Sony to save this though. Changing the system software, opening up app development and porting as many high profile Open Source Android apps to it as possible would be great ways to start. That and finally getting some decent system selling games on the thing.
i wonder why……….
Instead of slashing expectations they should slash the price of the vita.