Will Vita start outselling WiiU now?

[Scisca]

Sal.Paradise said:

Sensei said:

Sal.Paradise said:

Sensei said:
I stand by my prediction that PS Vita will outsell Wii U. Lifetime.

You're crazy! 

Maybe I am. But let's look at this scenario:

Vita's competition is already out at crushing strength (3DS, DS and even its brother PSP hurting its sales in Japan). I don't see it getting worse for the Vita. In fact it should improve as 3DS saturates market, PSP support ends in Japan, and PS Vita price naturally drops as its library increases.

Wii U however is pretty much alone. It's the one supposed to have the hype on its side, yet it is being eclipsed by the previous gen PS360. Can you imagine what is going to happen when PS4 and 720 are out at full force / full hype, and PS360 are even cheaper? This could put the Wii U in a critical situation.

I get that mentality, the Wii U is currently selling worse than Vita at the same point in its lifetime under more favourable conditions, but while the Vita started to (and will continue to) coast along with mostly niche third party support and the odd mid-sized first party/third party game, the Wii U is guaranteed all the usual big first party games from Nintendo within the next couple of years. There's just no way with the size of those franchises that the Vita won't be outsold by Wii U, unless similarly large franchises make their way to Vita (e.g. continued COD/AC support, a portable GTA and a GT game - which just aren't happening). 

Wii U is on the best way to repeat the GCN sales - as I have predicted months ago. What is the limit for it? 35 mil? Probably a bit more, so around 40 mil? It's really hard to believe it'll sell more than 45 mil. That's all that 1st party games can give it and they have to be awesome. This is an optimistic evaluation.

Vita will be getting good first party games, don't underestimate the Sony brands. God of War and GT are easily system sellers, Uncharted and Killzone and a few others are premium brands as well, so don't call them mid-sized, cause it just sounds ignorant. A GT game is on the way without a doubt. I expect it to come out in 2014, a bit later if they plan to release a Cross-Play port of the GT that will be released on PS4. Vita has already managed to build a respectable portfolio of games in just one year, it needs just that one spark now and then the ceiling for it, as a handheld, will be much higher than 40-45 million. I can easily see Vita follow the PS3 route and explode after some time, when price of the console and memory cards is right and a few more games get released. We'll know more about its potential in a couple of weeks, when current announcements influence the Japanese market and in September when Killzone will try to fight for the western audience. I also hope that Activision will continue (start?) to make CoD games for Vita. But good ones this time. I hope they'll see the sales this way: "we gave them the crappiest game in history of the franchise and yet it sold over 600k, if we make a good game, it'll sell way over a million." Also the development costs for Vita will be much lower than next gen, which may be a factor going for the console.

But you are right saying that Vita is much more dependant on the fickle 3rd party support. The future of Wii U is clear to me, it's just going to be mediocre yet profitable for Nintendo, just like GCN. Vita can still be a much bigger hit, or a bigger fail.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Vita and wallet ready for the upcoming games ;) This console is so awesome, that it deserves to be a success.

And I'm still hoping to play MGS Vita: Phantom Pain... That game would set the Vita charts on fire this Christmas.