"Now, of course, the Vita is selling like garbage, but that can be attributed almost absolutely to software support, or lack thereof and the total opposite situation for it’s closest competitor, the 3DS, which has a great catalogue of titles."
As an owner of a launch 3DS, its catalogue in the West is dreadful. No idea where this belief that it has a good library stems from. NSMB2 came out mid august and since then the only games worth noting have been Art Academy and Code of Princess which came out just this month. The Vita's first year library is much stronger than the 3DS' first year library and I'm sure all fellow 3DS and Vita launch owners that had to wait until November for MK7 and SM3DL would agree. Such a drought of games on a platform outperforming the original DS is unacceptable.
The Vita's abysmal sales are attributable to the fact that it's too expensive in a market where all 3 major home consoles are more affordable and naturally have larger libraries, its competitor has stronger brand power at the moment and a cheaper handheld platform, and of course the eroded Sony brand. The proprietary memory doesn't help either. It could be the most amazing piece of tech in the world, but the average person will ask "why on earth does it cost as much as a home console that's capable of playing blu-rays and 3D games".
Also to clarify before an army of irrational fans throw their angry posts at me, the 3DS library in Japan is phenomenal, but that's just one market whereas the 3DS is greatly outselling the Vita in markets where its library isn't all that strong.
As for the Playstation brand in general, I think it's just a matter of the PS3's poor start which began the erosion of the Playstation brand that didn't stop until 2009, and in turn severed its strong relations with third parties. I can guarantee you if the PS3 replicated the PS2s success and the 360 and Wii flunked, you wouldn't have seen FF, Tekken and DQ go to other console platforms. It's created a new culture at Sony where they rely heavily on first party titles, which I think is a positive. While the brand is far from doomed as PS3 sales are solid, they'll just have to buckle up like Nintendo did with the N64 and GC. We're seeing a generation of gaming where all 3 competitors are equally favourable in the consumer's eye, and it has nothing to do with the PS brand dying. If anything the brand was in a worse state after the first year of this generation.
Apologies for the poor editing, I have no time.
