| Kresnik said: This was a strange, strange post. To address it point by point:
At this point in time, I think Vita has been a shining example of how the vast, vast majority of the market don't care about "but you can play it anywhere on a handheld!" Phones & tablets satisfy the need for adult gamers to play on the go. Phones; tablets & 3DS' satisfy the need for younger games to play on the go. The fact that Sony have increasingly targeted the latter as time goes on (i.e. last year's "summer" advertising campaign; putting money into stuff like PS Vita Pets this year) shows that they recognise that market is all that's left for them at this point. If they can get a few western otaku's and cross-buy-indie-game fans on board too, then that's great, but they can't be a particularly sustainable or large market.
Nintendo's franchises have universal appeal. You don't look at something like Mario or Zelda and think "this is a real Japanese-culture title". But certainly with a lot of the Vita stuff we've been getting - from Conception to to Deception to Demon Gaze to Freedom Wars, there is a massive eastern influence. Primarily, because these games were designed to sell in Japan first and the rest of the world second. I can't think of a single Japanese-developed Sony IP that isn't focused on the Japanese market first, save for Gran Turismo. Conversely, Nintendo's games sell well in the Japanese market and have big overseas appeal to either children or long-time fans of the franchises. There's nothing wrong with people disliking strongly-Japanese influenced games. Heck, the first time I played Yakuza I found it very hard to adjust to how differently the game world felt to me - it was on the borderline of being completely alien. Also, your list of western games kinda highlights how sad things are for the Vita at the moment. And don't get me wrong - I am one of the small minority that actually loves that Vita is getting all these HD Collections of games I adored on PS2. But like I said, people like me are a tiny minority. For most people, that will be a list of games which they played on the PS2 or PS3 or would prefer to play on the PS2 or PS3. Which comes back to my first point of "but it's a handheld!" not being a selling point for many. When you're selling your console on the strengths of Killzone; Unit 13; LittleBigPlanet & Tearaway then there's a problem, no matter how good the games might actually be.
I find there to be some baffling comparisons in here. FFX & Persona 4 are both mostly traditional JRPG's with turn-based battle systems, yet one is comparable to a first person dungeon crawler and the other is comparable to a SRPG? Kid Icarus, a third person rail shooter gets compared to Gravity Rush, an open world action-adventure game? As for the rest of them, again, for the vast majority of the market they would see a list like this and think that Vita is just getting inferior versions of games they could play on the 3DS. Why buy a Vita to play Modnation when you can get the superior Mario Kart on 3DS? In some cases it's unfair - Ys deserves much more recognition than it gets and I genuinely think it's better than Zelda for my own personal tastes, but that's just how the market goes.
You should all know how much I love Vita but I don't think making yourself feel better about the situation by drawing odd comparisons and making the console seem like it's getting better support than it's getting is making the situation any better. If all your points were true and Sony's IP's could go toe-to-toe with Nintendo's; and it had a vast library of quality western titles, then why is it selling so badly in America? Yes, advertising, but even lack of advertising doesn't excuse 10k in a whole month. |
Sure, tablet devices have taken a huge chunck away from the handheld market but Sony has tried to adapt to that. The Vita does what many tablets do, and then does games better. You won't see KZ Mercs, Uncharted GA level games on tablet or phones (yet....). The market for full fledged games, not time wasting distractions is still there. Not as big as it was, but still there.
My game vs game comparison are about more than straight up game mechanics but also about the type of market they shoot for as well as feelings the evoke. SMT4 and P4G are part of the same series and meant to market to similar people, they have their differences but that doesn't change. They play off each other's fame. Ys and Zelda envoke and admittedly similar vibe of adventure and wonder. FE and FF analogy was simply high profile RPG vs high profile RPG in the same year.Gravity Rush and Kid Icarus both have an aspect of weightlessness that make them similar. What that was meant to point out is that there is no shortcoming in the Vita's Roster. The only true difference is that Nintendo has a long running pedigree in this market and buyer habit has them choose that far more easily than Vita. Most of Sony's Vita IPs created are new or just coming to fruition. The strongest they even have is Uncharted and that was only just created in 7th Gen. Put that against stuff like Pokemon and Mario which have been around for......forever, you get my point.
I was simply trying to demonstrate that Vita's problems are very little about it's games, hardware, or price. All the required gaps a gaming handheld should fill are filled for Vita. You want RPGs? FFX/X-2, Persona 4 Golden, etc. You want bite size games? Vita has indies by the bucket load for dirt cheap or FREE. You want functionality? Vita has Web Browser, Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, Maps, Calculator, Calendars, etc.
The games are there, the price is quite reasonable in perspective, and the hardware is a beauty. It's only real problem is IMAGE. The system needs proper advertising for it's strong points, features, and games of interest. They also need to market the thing to the right venues. PSP got a bad rap for being advertised as a multimedia device over a gaming handheld but in the end I think that helped it sell so much more. They need to peddle aggressively to the tablet market, as a great cheaper alternative to children or people who want more gaming eumph on the go. And the games most of all need proper marketing. The Vita's marketing is spotty. Sony is used to being able to coast this way as they have done with every single one of their home consoles because they were so popular from day one. But the competition in that market is not nearly as steep as the handheld because of Nintendo's tenure.
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