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

[Nautilus]

torok said:

Nautilus said:

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.

They did a sizeable push, with a bunch of 1st party titles. It just didn't worked out. You are forgetting stuff like Soul Sacrifice, Gravity Rush, Resistance, Uncharted, Hot Shots Golf, MLB, LBP, Killzone, Tearaway, etc. And it had a fairly good 3rd party support at the start, with Mortal Kombat, SF vs Tekken, Marvel vs Capcom, Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Ninja Gaiden.

3DS sales aren't nowhere neas as bad as Vita. Both are acceptable for a dying market. But the point is that putting effort on Vita wouldn't just get them a lot more than 10M extra sales. Which still makes it a fairly low number. It's better to put their effort on PSVR or PS4 revisions that can simply pour that extra sales for a device that costs 2X more, so more profit.

The point is that if the biggest impact on Vita sales were their mistakes, why would 3DS be so low? Let's face it, the only mistake with 3DS was pricing, but they fixed it in a year. A near perfect run by the company that always wins on portables and it still did poorly at the end. It really doesn't paint a good scenario for the company that got outsold 2:1 last gen.

I'm not taking away Sony's errors here. Basically, the memory cards and Vita's price. But taking losses by cutting this prices while still making games for it wouldn't make it sell much more.

Also, I think people are harsher on 3DS because of the situation of both companies. While Vita flopped hard, the PS4 is a big success, so the main device is doing great. For Nintendo, 3DS is the main device right now and the predictions aren't good.

The problem with your point is that you are focusing on things they did that had a slight impact on the final result. If it was correctly managed, do you think it would do 50 or 60M, maybe even beating the 3DS? Of course not. Anything they do wouldn't make it go as far as 30M, even 40M would be a moonshot. The PSP was half of the DS, it is really crazy to believe that Vita could do better. You're focusing on stuff that simply didn't matter. It would make maybe 10M more, but that's still a failure. So it really doesn't matter. The handheld market is dead, Sony and Nintendo already agreed on that.

The first year was good, I said that already.What I stated was the problem lied in the subsequent years.So from all the games you listed that takes off Gravity Rush, Uncharted, Resistance, Little Big Planet, and many more.When you take those out and spread the rest through the remaining years, it will look barren to say the least.(and Soul Sacrifice is a second party game by the way).

And Vita sales arent acceptable even in a daying market.I mean, it managed to bring profit?If not, then its not acceptable.And if what you say its true, that even if you fixed the miriad problem the Vita had and those extra 10 millions were not enough to bring in profit/satisfy Sony projected sales, then the concept itself of the Vita was flawed.For all the blame people like to throw at Nintendo hardware for being underpowered at launch, they do understand the handheld market, and thus the decision that the 3DS of being a weak machine was because that was the fit for the market.If a powerful handheld machine was never going to be successful, or Sony didnt have enough attrractive games to compete with Nintendo or to survive in the market, that should have been accounted for in the planning phase of the Vita and measures should have been taken accordingly, even if it meant not releasing the machine at all.

In the end, if something fails, it is still pretty much your fault.Wether you failed to grasp if it had a market for your product, or if your product isnt simply atrractive enough, its all on you.The Wii U bad sales was Nintendos fault.Why isnt Vita Sonys fault?