Why are people saying no price cut for Vita? Last year the system sold about 3.5 million units. It's currently trending at 60% of last year's performance even with a price cut in Japan. That projects to about 2.1 million sales worldwide at the current pace. Unless something drastic is done Sony will come up 50% short of hitting this target. I would suggest a goal of 5 million units would in fact imply a western price cut is guarenteed. If it's like Japan a price cut could boost sales upwards of 50% and we could see Vita exceeding 3 million units worldwide, and maybe with some software surprises and continued PSP sales the 5 million goal may not be that big of a stretch.
Also, it's not a stretch to say that PS Vita is in a lot of trouble and there isn't a lot of hope of a big turn around at this stage. It's certainly not "trolling" to say it may be Sony's last dedicated handheld. At its current rate it will be lucky to exceed 15 million lifetime. Iwata himself said that if Wii didn't exceed the 20 million of the Gamecube that Nintendo would have questioned its console future.
I actually think its extremely likely that PS Vita will be the last Sony handheld. The market has taken a beating from smartphones, and the remainder of the market seems consumed by 3DS. It's probably good for the market if Nintendo has a monopoly, as it isn't a true monopoly with the smartphone competition. Dedicated games developers are probably best off putting all of their resources focusing on one platform to make it a valuable alternative to phone and tablet gaming.
I think the future of Sony portable gaming is in the excellent XPeria phones. I picked up a ZL and its outstanding. I don't think its a stretch at all to think that in about 2-3 years we see the latest XPeria line offering Playstation editions and games. This could be lucrative and successful. Sony isnt't a big enough software maker to push a handheld on their own, but if they offer great connectivity with PS4 they could push phones and 3rd parties may make mobile editions and so forth. Sony lacks the child-friendly brands like Mario and Pokemon and the software capacity to make a cheap dedicated handheld successful, and expensive handhelds have little appeal now with almost all adults having a smartphone.
