Vita autopsy: What Went Wrong?

[Zackasaurus-rex]

Sentient_Nebula said:

Zackasaurus-rex said:

You're naming much less proven problems for the 3DS. Marketing and time seem to have fixed the name confusion, the massive emergency price cut caused a 3DS sales spike, and innovation doesn't explain a lot. Meanwhile, the impact of smartphones is one that cannot be precisely measured but is quite qualitatively proven and quantitatively supported. This hit the Vita harder (it has more in common with a smartphone overall and has some of its own challenges), but it still hit handhelds en masse.

Okay. I just felt smartphones wasn't a good enough reason for the Vita's low sales, since the I thought the 3DS would've been affected by around the same amount, and didn't fully explain the gap between the 3DS and Vita.

I suppose that last sentence makes sense though.

No worries. You are definitely right in that smartphones alone don't tell the whole story. They are however the single biggest change in the handheld market.

 

Keep in mind that the DS did a lot better than the PSP, so we might expect the 3DS to have a higher baseline in general. Both platforms are huge failures compared to their predecessors.