Vita’s fight for life: After almost a year, has Sony’s handheld managed to distinguish itself?

[GhaudePhaede010]

osed125 said:

GhaudePhaede010 said:
What in the world is going on with this thread. Look, it is very simple and pretty much black and white.

The problem with Vita has been and will always be the pricing model. It is simple, you charge 300 for a console and then jack up the price of memory units and what you have is a recipe for sales failure.

Sales of phones and tables have absolutely no impact on hand held gaming. Well, not enough impact to be considered substancial. You guys are drastically overthinking this situation.

Games are games, we know both Vita and 3DS are going to have some games of interests and games that span almost every genre (from console type games to arcade type games to pick-up-and-play type games to unique to their platform type games) but what caused 3DS to struggle in the beginning (yes, MORE than a lack of games) was the 250 US price tag. Bottom line, that is too much for anyone not a hardcore Nintendo fan to pay. The same is said of Vita. The difference is, Nintendo dropped the price (and sales picked up athough phones/tablets are still, "in the same market") and Sony has decided to ignorantly maintain their pricing model.

That is your key difference, and now it may be too late for Sony to do anything (including dropping the price) to regain any momentum they once had going with Vita. 3DS is better established and dominating this generation, and even PSP has a better library of titles and a cheaper price making it a competitor.

You guys are killing me with this talk of phones/tablets hurting the hand held market. What hurts the hand held market is thee inflated entry price on new hardware and accessories. Jeesh!

I disagree with you on that part, imo the 3DS would have just fine with at least 2 big games. Imagine if the 3DS had Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 at launch, I think that would have been a hole different story.

What killed the 3DS at the beginning was the lack of big games, not saying the price wasn't a factor (because it was) but imo the games were more important than the price.  

I agree with the rest.

I have said this before and will probably say it again: if the price remained the same but say Mario 3dLand came out at launch, what you would have seen (most likely) was the same buy rate of the console but a better attach rate for the games as well as a million selling game much sooner than we got one (kind of like Smash Bros. on Gamecube where sales were not very high but the games attach rate was amazingly high). It would not necessarily mean better sales, in my opinion, it would not have impacted as much as... say... the console was to launch at $199 USD.

However, if my main point is one you agree with, I can agree to disagree with you on the rest as it is purely speculation what would have happened. Besides, I do agree a lack of games was a big deal... I believe more that the price was a bigger deal in this case. This hand held (as well as Vita currently) was priced just above the mass market limit.