Mobile Gaming Didn't Kill The Vita -- Sony Did

[WC4Life]

MikeRox said:

Very much this. It had an exclusive Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, Wipeout, Call of Duty, Little Big Planet, along with many major multi platform titles including FIFA, Need for Speed, Sonic Allstars Racing: Transformed (a long with a load of other decent software) all in it's first holiday. If the biggest franchises in gaming couldn't shift it, not much else was going to...

I also find it doubtful that memory cards were a deal breaker for millions and millions of consumers. The logical conclusion is just that the Vita is a product that nobody really wants outside a minority.

Reason the Vita failed? Pretty much exactly the emmergence of mobile gaming/smartphones.

Look at the big marketing points of the PSP. Yes, it had "console quality" gaming... kind of. However, it was also a cheap MP3 player, and portable movie player. It was an all in one entertainment device.

Fast Forward to 2012 and the iPhone and it's rivals have pretty much taken every single additional appeal of the PSP and bettered it. (not only can you play mp3s, you can stream them directly to your phone. Want the latest movie? Yep it's on iTunes or the Play Store to buy or rent) it's much easier to carry around than a PSP was too. Fits in most people's pockets, far more practical and with far more uses.

On the gaming front. Portable consoles used to be the only way to be able to play games on the go. Yes the quality takes a hit on mobiles, but it's "good enough" for a 10 minute wait at the bus stop or whatever. So the casual end of the handheld market has completely evaporated.

On top of this, Nintendo were incredibly aggressive in the run up to the Vita launch having significantly reduced the retail price of the 3DS and rushed it's biggest games to market for the Holiday prior to Vita's launch grabbing the floating consumer who was until then undecided between the two.

Yes Nintendo's decline isn't as severe, but it's audience bought a DS purely for gaming, not for multimedia functionality. In reality though, the fact that Western Publishers have all but abandoned even the 3DS, it's quite clear that the entire market is in serious trouble. You only need to look at NPD's findings that 60% of kids are now gaming on a phone/tablet rather than a dedicated system to demonstrate this. And people growing up with mobile gaming, will likely always stick with it and the market will only decline further from here.

/Doom.

Sony's repositioning of the system as one for Indies and lower budget games has paid dividends however. I'm extremely impressed at the huge catalogue such a bomba of a system has managed to gain and it goes to show that there is a lot of active gamers on the Vita.

Such a fine post which covers many viewpoints.