Vita autopsy: What Went Wrong?

[Zackasaurus-rex]

fatslob-:O said:

Zackasaurus-rex said:

Regarding the last statement, this just tells us that you are uninformed on the subject. While VGC's consistently troubled tracking of physical sales tells one imperfect story, it completely neglects the digital side, and digital sales make up a higher percentage of Vita sales than they do on any other console/handheld. Devs have spoken out about the high attach ratio, indicating that it was over ten games per system owners many months back. That's actually pretty incredible. It makes sense, though. The Vita has an extremely core demographic, meaning that people who don't consume a lot of games aren't likely to buy a Vita. Meanwhile, the Vitas has more than a strong enough library to keep that core buying.

Regarding the first thing, you're making a fallacy. A launch doesn't define a platform's library (though the titles I mentioned go way, way beyond launch), but it does indicate early success. What we learnt from the Vita is that excellent games from new IPs and popular old IPs alike were not driving sales. The games were not the problem (though certainly we can endlessly posit that more games at least constantly help to some degree), because the system was not selling particularly well even when it was releasing quality, high-profile games much more than the 3DS was. Blaming a fancied lack of games is to not understand that the system and its positioning are the real problems. The Vita gets less high-profile exclusives now than it used to get because the system itself did not sell well enough when it already had the games. This is a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario, and you're getting it wrong.

It's not very hard to get a high tie ratio when you have a samll userbase ...

So your still telling me that games weren't the problem ? 

Yes, but other "failed" systems like the N-Gage (though its worth noting that ongoing Vita support makes it a non-failure, but rather an underperformer) have had low attach ratios. That high attach ratio is the result of the very core audience of the Vita (and audiences tend to get less core as they grow, as you implied), but it still requires a stable library of interesting and diverse titles. And indeed, the Vita offers that to its audience.

And yes, I am telling you that. Throwing more games at any system can help, but that doesn't explain its troubles. The Vita was troubled even when it had consistent and impressive high-profile game releases. It would still have that status quo, if not even more/faster releases, if not for troubled sales back then. The sales stopped (most of) the high profile games. Lack of high profile games did not cause the sales problem. Now that sales are too low to support many new high profile titles, it's a two-fold problem that is exercabiting.

So, in short, what we're really arguing is what the -root- problem is. And we know that the root problem is not games, because the Vita hit its struggles in the midst of a great flurry of titles and promises. Games depend on a platform even more than a platform depends on games, because the platform has to come first. If the platform doesn't do well after launch, the games will stop coming, creating a negative cyclical relationship. The Vita was not selling well in spite of its games, not because of them.