To me, the main problem is that Sony is approaching PS Vita's strategy from a steal share perspective.
It's a problem for 2 reasons:
1) The entire category is going down because of the threat of substitutes (smartphones)
2) The demographic they're targeting (adults) are leaving the category entirely due to substitutes
So really, Sony is trying to steal adult gamers from the 3DS, when a majority of those gamers have already abandoned handheld gaming. Instead of pushing how differentiating the PS Vita is (better graphics, thumbsticks, etc) and push why consumers should want a handheld in the first place. There's a number of ways they can do this:
1) Smartphones are bad for gaming because of battery life. Emphasize that games drain a smartphone's battery very quickly, and the problem is compounded when the batteries get older. Sony can illustrate this by showing a person having their phone die on them, maybe missing an important call.
2) Smartphones are poor sources of entertainment for long periods of times. Smartphones are great for killing time on the short run. There's something new on the net you can look up, you can play a phone game for 5-10 minutes. But games like Angry Birds get very old and boring when you're at an airport or on the plane, especially when your flight gets delayed.
So again, I think Sony needs to go back to basics. Why should the average consumer even want a handheld when they already have an expensive portable device anyway?
