| JWeinCom said: Marketing is a part of overall strategy. Marketing is or should be informed by the product. We would assume that if Sony is competent, they would base their ad campaign around what is the best feature of their system. One would also assume that Sony is competent enough to realize that they have to market the console in multiple regions (btw, the PSP's biggest region was Europe and America and Japan were neck and neck . According to VGChartz numbers more software was sold in US than Japan by about 15 million so far) and would design a product with multiple regions in mind as they are a global software company. When someone who's job it is to market in the US talks about Sony's strategy, that they are talking about Sony's US strategy. That's what I'm talking about at least. Sony is publishing console games and marketing with the slogan "play like you do at home". It's not working as a strategy, but that's whwat they're doing right now. I'm going to assume that people are going to be held accountable if the Vita fails, so someone has to care if it succeeds. It may be a crappy strategy, but that's what they're going with right now. |
Sony has some of the worst marketing in gaming, and that's saying something. I'd wager they just laid off their marketing team for a reason. So I'm not sure why we should assume competence on their part. But again, Moffitt is specifically talking how people play and the amount of time they want to invest in a handheld game at one go, and not about marketing. Just because something is "console quality" in terms of graphics or control schemes or whatever doesn't mean it can't also be designed for shorter handheld sessions (which, again, is something I don't think really matters with suspend mode).
I don't put much stock in VGChartz numbers, but as far as I know it's certainly possible that more units of the PSP were sold in the US or Europe than in Japan. Maybe software, too, because the PSP did have a short but hot run in the west for a while there with GTA and the like. But then it died a miserable death and became just a machine for pirates and emulators while it just kept on trucking in Japan for years after, regularly topping the charts against even the mighty DS. Given that and SCEA's obvious disinterest in the Vita, I can only deduce that SCEJ considers the PSP to be much more of a success than does SCEA. Unfortunately for the Vita, SCEJ's developmental side had withered away over the course of the last generation and has only recently started to be rebuilt.
