archbrix said:
Baby steps, Rol. Baby steps. OT: It's a valiant effort, Cloud, but unfortunately I personally have no interest in the Vita... even with a Bioshock game announced. I do want dedicated handhelds to prosper, but to me the Vita is just the PSP all over again; which might be a great thing for some people, but not me personally. This video from The 7th Level sums up a lot of what I think about the Vita; and keep in mind that 7th is a big Playstation fan. Also, this vid is about four months old so some things may have changed by now: |
That just makes me think about a theory that Sony should have delayed the launch of the Vita in Japan. The tsunami, flooding, and nuclear incident really threw a wrench in their original plans. They were suppose to do a WW launch right before Christmas, and it would have been huge. Instead they had to limit it to Japan only...and then suffer media and consumer backlash as sales dropped off to a crawl up until WW release in February. Imagine if that didn't happen. Less bad press, larger launch numbers, and higher weekly sales during the slow times for the industry. That and maybe they would have been able to concentrate a little harder on the features they should have had from the get go. Instead they were rather busy with Kaz coming in as president and I don't blame them, that's a big transition. The Vita's reception would have been far better had they delayed the whole device even further, say May after Kaz was already in charge. By then the Vita would launch with more titles out of the cage (which would be even more epic than it already was) and have a little more testing time for them to place the system in a good spot. E3 would have been right around the corner, then Gamescom, then TGS, all boosting launch sales momentum with announcments like Cross Buy and later this fall PS Mobile (cross buy is not a knee jerk reaction to low sales, its implimentation does not hurt sales and was in concideration for months via a survey that was made public shortly after WW Vita launch).
This might have cost them sales for the few months they waited but saving themselves the harsh media backlash would have been worth it, they could complain about the delay but at least that would be more justifiable by Sony than slow sales for 5 months WW and 6 months in Japan. I would have gladely taken a late Vita with more momentum, but I guess I don't know all the logistics when it comes to launching a piece of hardware. Looking forward the system is going to do fine, the worst is behind it as new and exciting things are coming in at a rather consistent pace for the rest of the year and beyond. People underestimate the effect of PS Mobile, the most non traditional exciting addition to Vita. it comes this fall and will essentially be the Android Marketplace...best comparison atleast. Imagine that, all the useful feature driven goodness of a smartphone on a powerful dedicated handheld system that uses the PlayStation Network. Talk about awesome, I can't wait. When does Fall start?
Before the PS3 everyone was nice to me :(
