man-bear-pig on 26 February 2012
Sony CEO also says that the situation in Japan is not as bad as it seems.
If the CEO and President of Sony America, Jack Tretton, is to be believed, early sales of the Playstation Vita in the United States are looking “very, very, positive.” Those are his exact words when asked about his thoughts on how sales of the Vita have been progressing since the soft launch on the 15th of February and the hard launch this past week.
Tretton, in an article by Time Magazine, states that Memory for the system is “going out the door very aggressively despite the fact that memory is in a lot of the presale bundles” This is especially surprising because of the fact that the proprietary memory for the system costs nearly double that of memory equal in size.
The top selling game for the console is, not at all surpassing, Uncharted: Golden Abyss The positive reception that it has received by journalists coupled with it being a showcase for the graphical possibilities of the system have made it an instant must have. It currently has a rating of 80 on metacritic with an 8.5 user score.
This same sort of good publicity doesn’t seem to be shared by the Vita in Japan as sales have continued to drop since its first week of sales. Recent statistics show that sales have slumped every further to around 14,000; far below that of the DS or even the PSP at this early point in its life cycle.
Jack Tries to counteract all of this bad publicity by saying that it’s not as bad as it sounds and that performance of the system in Japan is actually rather good. The fact that the console has sold about half a million in its first three weeks is all well and good but, as the article by Time proclaims, “even if it clears 500,000 in the U.S. by early March, Nintendo’s 3DS cleared five million units in Japan in just 52 weeks — faster than any other game system in the country’s history.”
Only time will tell if Jack’s positive attitude will pay off and if the Vita will turn into the success that Sony wants the handheld to be.
My prediction threads:
Wii U will sell under 40m units (made on 14th September 2012)
PS Vita will sell under 20m units (made on 30th September 2012)
Wii U will sell under 7m in 2013 - I was right
