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Forums - Sony Discussion - PlayStation Vita Came "Too Late," Former Sony Exec Says

JWeinCom said:
Lawlight said:

The 3DS was first to the market and much cheaper. Its sales peaked in its first year and has dropped every year since then.

No.  Third year was the peak.

15.03M vs 12.9M. 



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mountaindewslave said:
Zackasaurus-rex said:
He is right. The Vita is a shadow of the PSP's success, and the 3DS is a shadow of the DS's success.

It saddened me, though.

but its absurd to expect record breaking numbers to ever be matched- the PSP and DS are not the 'norm'. Nintendo's handheld lifetime baseline sales on average probably are like 80 million hardware (GBA, GBC, etc.) The DS at 150 million is not the norm. Just like the PS2 at 150 million is not something you expect to repeat. If the PS4 ends up at like 90 million hardware sold it won't be considered a failure just because it comes nowhere near the record

Will the 3DS get to the baseline though?



No, your refusal to localize almost everything for the system was its death knell...

Seriously, I'd slap that man if I were close...



Lawlight said:
JWeinCom said:

No.  Third year was the peak.

15.03M vs 12.9M. 

Where are you getting those figures?  Doesn't match up to either vgchartz numbers or nintendo shipment figures.



JWeinCom said:
Lawlight said:

15.03M vs 12.9M. 

Where are you getting those figures?  Doesn't match up to either vgchartz numbers or nintendo shipment figures.

From Nintendo themselves. Check the Q3 Earnings releases for each year - they have the LTD as of the 31st of Dec in the last page:

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/earnings/index.html

Sales have decreased by this much every year:

2012: 1.5%

2013: 12.9%

2014: 40.5%

2015: 1.8%

First half of 2016: 30.6%



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Lawlight said:
JWeinCom said:

Where are you getting those figures?  Doesn't match up to either vgchartz numbers or nintendo shipment figures.

From Nintendo themselves. Check the Q3 Earnings releases for each year - they have the LTD as of the 31st of Dec in the last page:

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/earnings/index.html

Sales have decreased by this much every year:

2012: 1.5%

2013: 12.9%

2014: 40.5%

2015: 1.8%

First half of 2016: 30.6%

Ok then.  Seems to check out.



twintail said:
Nautilus said:

I understand if he listed that reason as one of the reasons the Vita failed, but as the sole one?They are just trying to push the blame to others, when part of the blame is on them.

Where exactly does he say it is the only reason it failed? He doesn't, he merely muses on what SCEA were thinking at the time when they had the Vita and had to push it somehow: 'This is a great machine, it's just too late.

And on hindsight he isn't wrong. 

And where exactlu does he says that it is not the only reason.The moment he failed to say that when asked the question implies that he thinks that is the only motive he thinks the Vita failed.I mean, I cant read his mind.

And by the way, he is wrong.My reasoning is in the part of the quote I wrote that you cut off.



My (locked) thread about how difficulty should be a decision for the developers, not the gamers.

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=241866&page=1

Nautilus said:

What BS?That after the one year(more or less) period, they only released one or two big releases on Vita?And by that I mean first party titles, not bundles which are way easier to do.And in the whole period you listed, Sony launched just a handful of big titles, like Killzone and Tearway and LBP(Im sorry but I dont count a collection of remaster as trying).So launching 3 or 4 big games in a period of 3 years(not countinh first year) is trying?Please.The PS4 can do that because it has heavy third party support(and even then it releases about 3 big titles every year), Sony knew the Vita needed a bigger push.I mean, the only big new IP the Vita had for a good while was Gravity Rush, and that game isnt even great(my opinion).

And it really makes me chuckle when people try to make 3DS sales bad even though it has passed 60 million and it will probably pass 70 million.I mean, yes it isnt the best selling Nintendo console, but it is still freaking 70 million on a shrieking market, and it is even funnier when people like you say that Vita failure is acceptable because the "market is not there anymore" but the 3DS is dissapointing because it, for some reason, should have made it better in the same market.

Look, if Sony had done the same thing as Nintendo by lowering 3DS price at the beginning when it was not selling, by making the memory cards cheaper, the system cheaper, made more games tailored for the system, in another words, tried harder instead of jumping ship in the first sign of failure, I would take on his word(and lets be honest, its not the first time they do that)But that was not the case.So Im sorry, but it is also Sony fault.

Oh, and by the way I do have a Vita and enjoyed it alot, so Im not trying to piss on it.Just making a constructive argument.

They did a sizeable push, with a bunch of 1st party titles. It just didn't worked out. You are forgetting stuff like Soul Sacrifice, Gravity Rush, Resistance, Uncharted, Hot Shots Golf, MLB, LBP, Killzone, Tearaway, etc. And it had a fairly good 3rd party support at the start, with Mortal Kombat, SF vs Tekken, Marvel vs Capcom, Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Ninja Gaiden.

3DS sales aren't nowhere neas as bad as Vita. Both are acceptable for a dying market. But the point is that putting effort on Vita wouldn't just get them a lot more than 10M extra sales. Which still makes it a fairly low number. It's better to put their effort on PSVR or PS4 revisions that can simply pour that extra sales for a device that costs 2X more, so more profit.

The point is that if the biggest impact on Vita sales were their mistakes, why would 3DS be so low? Let's face it, the only mistake with 3DS was pricing, but they fixed it in a year. A near perfect run by the company that always wins on portables and it still did poorly at the end. It really doesn't paint a good scenario for the company that got outsold 2:1 last gen.

I'm not taking away Sony's errors here. Basically, the memory cards and Vita's price. But taking losses by cutting this prices while still making games for it wouldn't make it sell much more.

Also, I think people are harsher on 3DS because of the situation of both companies. While Vita flopped hard, the PS4 is a big success, so the main device is doing great. For Nintendo, 3DS is the main device right now and the predictions aren't good.

The problem with your point is that you are focusing on things they did that had a slight impact on the final result. If it was correctly managed, do you think it would do 50 or 60M, maybe even beating the 3DS? Of course not. Anything they do wouldn't make it go as far as 30M, even 40M would be a moonshot. The PSP was half of the DS, it is really crazy to believe that Vita could do better. You're focusing on stuff that simply didn't matter. It would make maybe 10M more, but that's still a failure. So it really doesn't matter. The handheld market is dead, Sony and Nintendo already agreed on that.



Nautilus said:
Oh please, that was not Vita problem, at least not one of the real issue.Lack of big hit titles, expensive memory cards, and complete abandon of first party support after the first year or so is the real problem, along with others.

Yep! Sony may have turn it around earlier in its life and we could at least be seeing it around 20mil today. 



Pocky Lover Boy! 

The ridiculously expensive memory cards hurt it more than anything, imho.