| superchunk said: First off you have to get out of the mentality of two different markets. I'm proposing a combination of the two, not a loss of Vita's gaming aspect. 1) I know a TON of people who sped a lot of time of their phones. Overall the battery issue is a non-issue I think. Most people adapt their lifestyle to whatever they want to do. The first LTE phones had horrible battery lives (maybe 12hrs with little use) and guess what, they still sold very well. Additionally, most people, even current 3DS/Vita owners, don't sit on their machines every day all day. Form factor would be a bigger issue than this by far. 2) I agree that form factor of a slider phone would be a bigger issue. However, big phones are selling fine. Tons of phones with screens 4.5" or larger are out without issue. All the current slider phones like the Motorola Droid 1,2, and 3 all do really well as well. The brand new Galaxy Note which is a 5" monster sold over 2million already. Fact is, if they'll carry a phone and a Vita/3DS now, then a greater number will carry one in a combined unit. Then consider how many people take their thin phones and add thick ass cases on it. I don't think a thicker device would be a big factor. Like batteries you have to assume you won't ever please everyone. However, this device would certainly hit a larger market than a Vita or plain Sony phone by themselves. 3) If the Vita was selling like a smartphone it too would be selling for a profit. I don't even understand why you're questioning this and as someone who spends time on Ebay and craigslist selling and buy stuff including my own Galaxy Nexus for $500, there are tons of people out there who out of contract buy phones all day long. Then those who can't afford it will do the phone model on contract when they can for $200 or less, less because like all smartphones the carriers and retailers will subsidize the hell out of it. 4) Why in the world would you think they'd stop selling the Vita/core high end games? Sure there will be the Android market it its games, but the latest and greatest on cart or download will still be priced accordingly. Within a year we'll see a change in the mobile markets. They will start carrying higher end games as the hardware dramatically increase in power. With that the prices won't be much different, it can't. You'll see $40 games here as well and people will buy them since the experience is now comparable. (Just like on PCs) However, it will be more Steam with better sales and potentially even lower prices on games overall due to digital delivery's lower overhead. So Vita woudl have all the low end casual crap as well as all the Vita only high-end products. 5) I am that person, my last thread had a few agree with me. There are tons of Adults who don't want two mobile devices. Sure kids and teens don't care as much, but that is not the largest gaming market. 18-35 year olds are and in that group the greater majority probably have a smartphone and no portable gaming device. This is why Nintendo does so well in handhelds, the largest market that will want to have a portable gaming only device will be under 16. (except Japan of course) I know this is purely opinion and not provable, but from my circumstantial evidence as an adult with adults all day, I see none with gaming devices in their pockets. Yet the very large number of them who I know have gaming consoles, I'm sure a large percentage would consider a gaming phone over a normal phone. You may be just too young to see this in the same level as I do. 6) I agree and that direction should have been continued with a real Playstation product in Xperia Playstation Vita. |
I'm telling you, a combination of the two, would make it undesirable for either market(IMO) because of technical or physical limitations. You cannot optimize a device to be the ultimate gaming handheld and a competitive smart phone at the same time. It is impossible. Just like you can't take a high end gaming PC and fuse it with an Ipad, and expect the portability and affordablity of the Ipad and the power and functionality of a high end gaming console to hold true. It might all make perfect sense in your head and in theory but when it comes down to actually making the physical product, there will have to be many compromises that have to be made and it will hurt the experience on both ends. Also they cannot sell the Vita at a loss and give it the complete open Android market. Publishers would then just create mobile games on the android market that takes advantage of the controls and avoids the licensing fees that Sony charges for selling Vita games. That means Sony would no longer be able to sell the Vita at a loss and would probably have to be $200 to $300 more, on top of the greater cost of making it a smart phone.
You say price is not an issue, but it is an issue. You say size is not an issue, but it is. You say battery life is not an issue, but it is as well. You keep saying people will adapt, but you yourself is unwilling to adapt and carry two devices. That is very telling of what people would do if they had to make all these sacrifices to have a Vita Phone the way you want it.
