I had a scary thought about the Vita.

[Dodece]

@wlakiz

It really depends on what you mean by a increase. There are two purposes for price cutting to spur on genuine sales momentum, or to allow for stock to be cleared out. Since you are keen on a example, and I really shouldn't have to do this, because it is kind of obvious. The N-Gage was a device remarkably enough quite similar to the Vita except that it was a combo game/phone. It was even in the same market as the Vita, but competed against the Vita's own predecessor. This is what is called a apt example as in I am comparing a expensive portable gaming device against another expensive portable gaming device.

The N-Gage retailed at three hundred dollars, and sold a few thousand units its first week on the market. Within a few weeks it even saw its first retail price cut. When a number of specialty retailers slashed the retail price that they were charging for the device by a third, and that was the first of many to come. As the device quickly moved into clearance mode. Even though the device went from selling a few thousand at launch to selling three million units in the end. The majority of those sales were pure clearance. Before all was said and done you could buy a N-Gage at retail for under fifty dollars.

There are a lot of reasons that people believe the product failed, but the truth of the matter is it still failed even with severe price cuts. The reality is that the competition just out competed this product handily. Even when this device was being sold at severe discount, and had a serious price advantage consumers really didn't pay it no mind. Most of the sales were pure trash sales. You are right in that you can sell almost anything if the price is low enough, but that doesn't magically make the product viable.

You still aren't quite getting the difference between market share and install base. This isn't about percentages at all. The point is that a product needs a bare minimum of users for it to be a feasible market to develop for. Developers are in the market to make money, and if the costs of developing a game for a platform exceed the potential profit from sales. Then it isn't worth developing for that platform even if it is under supported.

On the whole I think you are trying to make the case for a equilibrium developing on the platform, but even if the whole of the platform dwindles to just a handful of development studios. That in itself creates a new problem. The owners of the platform aren't beholden, and they aren't captive either. As the supply of available games decreases so to does their own investment in the platform. A small install base effectively becomes smaller. As fewer of those owners actively use their device. Most will have made the transition to a better supported platform.

This isn't the chicken and the egg we are talking about. What we are talking about is will the platform go into a very real death rattle if its sales don't pick up dramatically in the next few months, and since people say that price cuts will do that over and over again. Well the question is can this cure actually do anything. Don't tell me it will. Tell me how it will.