| FiveOVER said: I hope it lasts until 2018 at least, although its a little too optimistic. |
That seems a bit too much like wishful thinking.
Then again, we're still getting PSP games in 2014 - and the fact Vita hasn't been hacked may prove an advantage for the console going forward. I read an interesting article about that today actually (this was a bitch to find again - I went digging just for you!). It's with the former NISA president and he talks about their expansion into Europe:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/nippon-ichis-haru-akenaga-article
Q: You've shown a lot of support for PSP in the past. Recently there's been talk of retailers withdrawing some of their support, refusing to stock the PSPGo and so on. How concerned are you about these issues?
Haru Akenaga: It's a really tough market for PSP now. We have to reconsider. We've already started developing some titles, but from now on, we will evaluate and reconsider the console we should be developing for. I learned a lot last year and this year about Europe. Originally, the PSP itself was selling pretty well there but the software sales were really poor. I thought that might create a good opportunity for us to release our titles for PSP, so that's why we published them titles back then. But the reason why the games don't sell is piracy. In which case, it could be tough to release PSP games in the European market - especially as retailers don't want to take PSP titles. So we are trying to change the platform [we focus on] to PS3.
The PSP's hardware sales were a draw for them, but the rampant piracy made them reconsider that. This is a 2009 interview, so this was after they'd pulled through with a lot of titles (Generation of Chaos; Blade Dancer etc.) and to their credit they followed it up with loads of stuff too (everything from Cladun to a new Generation of Chaos last year) despite him mentioning a PS3 focus here.
So the fact that the Vita is locked down, though the user-base is anaemic in the west, at least it's a solid platform where they know users won't pirate the games, and if a niche can be established (which I think it already has been - see Tom from XSEED's comment I linked above) then the platform might just stay viable for a while.
Retailers dropping the platform may be a concern, admittedly, but honestly the only places in the UK I know that don't stock Vita stuff are supermarkets... and I can honestly say I've never seen an NISA title in a UK supermarket for any platform, so...
(Besides, the rise of online shopping seems to render any brick & mortar losses a bit less important)
As long as Japan keeps getting the kind of titles that NISA/XSEED/Aksys/IFI would like to pick up from devs who are open to overseas licencing - which it certainly seems to be getting if what's announced for 2015 is any indication - then I can see it carrying on.
And I really hope it does. Vita may not have been a lot of things I was hoping it would be, but one thing I'm very glad about is the localization house support. It provides a large amount of content that I'm genuinely interested in playing and has certainly kept my Vita well-used these past two years.
