Sony can still salvage the Vita in the west...and here's how

[VanceIX]

torok said:

VanceIX said:

4. Make a digital-only Vita and retail it for less.

Now, I know that the PSP Go was an utter flop, but I'm confident that Sony learned from that experience and can do it right this time around. The problem with the Go was that not only was it far more expensive than a normal PSP (even though it lacked a UMD drive), but also that there weren't a lot of digital games available for it. This generation, all physical games are also available in digital, and there are many indie games that are exclusively digital. If Sony made a digital-only Vita and retailed it for, say, $149 USD, they would generate more sales along with having the benefit of making more money per games sold by cutting out the middle-man for every game sold. 

 

For the PSP Go, that made sense to cut the price. They could remove the optical unit, that contains more expensive parts. Consider that the PSP was the only UMD device in the world and that drive was made in small quantities just for it, it was expensive. The card reading unit on Vita is way cheaper, it's almost free in large amounts. Removing it wouldn't change the price. The expensive part there (that could be changed, since the SoC and other specs are fixed) was the screen, replaced by cheaper LCD. The cards could be cheaper, they are'nt that different from other memory cards to justify the cost, it's just Sony being greedy.

I know that the card reader isn'y costly to make, but by selling the Vita for less while making it digital-only, Sony gets a higher profit margin on each game sold.