PlayStation Vita Came "Too Late," Former Sony Exec Says

[Nautilus]

torok said:

Nautilus said:

efore I begin, i never said that the mobile market had anything with it.It HAS eaten a portion of the handheld market, and anybody who says otherwise is just fooling themselves.But if you say that is the only reason the vita failed is simply wrong.

The Vita was plagued by a mirriad of mistakes.Expensive memory cards, lack of support after 1 year, expensive launch price, lack of good third party(more mainstream and compared to the 3DS), and many more smaller reasons.The point I am trying to make is that the shrinking of the market alone didnt make the Vita fail this bad.I mean, look at the 3DS.It didnt perform like the DS or the original Gameboy, but it is very likely that it will end selling over 70 millions(It already passed the 60 million mark according to Nintendo, and that was more than 2 months ago.VGchartz numbers are wrong), landing somewhere near what the GBA has done.And with that number, it will have been a successful console.Now, is it wise to launch another handheld console?Most likely not, since the smartphone market probably grew even larger and ate a bigger share of the handheld market, but by the time the Vita launched, it could have been more successful, if the right choices were made.I mean, its not PSP-successful, but I would argue that it could have reached the 30-40 million mark.Maybe even more, who knows.

I understand if he listed that reason as one of the reasons the Vita failed, but as the sole one?They are just trying to push the blame to others, when part of the blame is on them.

You are saying that they stopped supporting it just because they wanted to. They stopped supporting it because it wasn't selling. They didn't stopped supporting it after one year, stop saying this BS. I bought mine exactly one year after the launch when they did the CoD and Assassin's Creed bundles when these games released, also launching LBP. It was almost two or three year after launch that they launched Killzone and Tearaway. 3 year after launch they did their last resorts: Freedom Wars and PS3 collections such as GoW Collection. Nothing worked, so they quit.

Even if they were more efficient, they wouldn't reach even 25M. The PSP's demographic market was oriented to older gamers and teenagers. While some kind won't have phones, teens and adults will surely have, so the impact is even greater.

Also mind that GBA isn't a good measure for 3DS "success" because Nintendo killed it prematurely with the DS after just three years. The 3DS has more than 5 years without any sucessor to kill it early. Even 70M seems unlikely after it did 7M last year and is tracking for 5 this year. With a successor in the next year, it will struggle to do half of it, so things aren't looking bright.

What you have to understand is that he is correct because even if they did a stellar launch, support and product, it would still fail in the end. Why would they expend money and time if it wouldn't help? They just cut support on something that wouldn't work to focus on their winning horse.

What BS?That after the one year(more or less) period, they only released one or two big releases on Vita?And by that I mean first party titles, not bundles which are way easier to do.And in the whole period you listed, Sony launched just a handful of big titles, like Killzone and Tearway and LBP(Im sorry but I dont count a collection of remaster as trying).So launching 3 or 4 big games in a period of 3 years(not countinh first year) is trying?Please.The PS4 can do that because it has heavy third party support(and even then it releases about 3 big titles every year), Sony knew the Vita needed a bigger push.I mean, the only big new IP the Vita had for a good while was Gravity Rush, and that game isnt even great(my opinion).

And it really makes me chuckle when people try to make 3DS sales bad even though it has passed 60 million and it will probably pass 70 million.I mean, yes it isnt the best selling Nintendo console, but it is still freaking 70 million on a shrieking market, and it is even funnier when people like you say that Vita failure is acceptable because the "market is not there anymore" but the 3DS is dissapointing because it, for some reason, should have made it better in the same market.

Look, if Sony had done the same thing as Nintendo by lowering 3DS price at the beginning when it was not selling, by making the memory cards cheaper, the system cheaper, made more games tailored for the system, in another words, tried harder instead of jumping ship in the first sign of failure, I would take on his word(and lets be honest, its not the first time they do that)But that was not the case.So Im sorry, but it is also Sony fault.

Oh, and by the way I do have a Vita and enjoyed it alot, so Im not trying to piss on it.Just making a constructive argument.