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Otter on 29 September 2021
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Wyrdness said:
Otter said:

Its not cherry picking or unfair. The Vita's best selling game barely passed 300k in Japan, its also a re-release. We can't compare the likes of Disgaea, Dragon Crown, Persona 4 Golden and Hiku to the far bigger titles we saw home platforms like Smash Bros, Mario Kart, 3D Mario etc. The gamecube also had plenty of niche titles. 

If a home console was limited to PSVita's library, it would of sold abysmally in Japan. That was the telling thing from the hardware comparison
 
As far as comparing the likes of PS2 to GBA there's obviously a limit to the kind of games a GBA/16bit device can offer, once the handhelds moved to realising 3D worlds it was a wrap. PSP was literally neck and neck with the PS2 sales wise but we can see that the inidvidual selling power of PSP games were far behind their PS2 counterparts. Japanese developers preferring to develop on portable/low spec machines doesn't negate the fact that portables have an advantage in the market, in fact it only reinforces it. The only reason why this is misunderstood is because its being perceived in a Sony vs Nintendo lens.

Except we can compare the games Vita got because as a collective library it very much caters to the region better than the two consoles you cherry picked those two platforms only sold what they did because of the first party offering look at platforms that didn't have Nintendo's first party like the DC that only could reach 2.2m for reference, GC didn't have plenty of niche titles that catered to the region it just had general niche titles, games like Doshin the Giant aren't the same as what I named.

Vita sold abysmally though it's competitor outsold it 4 times over and it's only compared to struggling or failed platforms that says it all the comparison basically is telling of nothing but cherry picking.

GBA also sold less than the SNES and NES so your 3D argument doesn't fly here, PSP had rampant piracy on it why do you think third parties outside of Capcom's MH team avoided it you could buy a PSP then buy a memstick off ebay with all the games loaded on it along the homebrew app to run them, this is the same platform that had PS1 games running on it before official PSN releases so they would be behind their PS2 counterparts.


Pikmin alone sold more than any PSVita game in Japan (at retail). How else do we decipher how well a niche title appeals to the market other than looking at its sales? The Vita has a lack of notable sellers. To compare the collective library as a whole I'd have to see them and their sales in front of me, which I do not. Do you? 

SNES/NES do not need to be outsold by the GBA in order for my argument to hold. Both systems for their time represented the full scope of what was possible and appreciated in Japanese gaming with no portable platform to compete with. The GBA did not represent scope of Japanese gaming tastes in 2001 and was limited in what it could offer gamers. 

Edit: Those loopholes existed in every region for the PSP but we see its sales are disproptionately high in Japan. In no other market is the PSP neck to neck with the PS2.

Beyond that the industry and tastes are not fixed and is allowed to evolve in time. What's clear is that the tastes of market favour lower spec portable machines, making it harder for home consoles to succeed when very capable portable machines exist alongside them. That's it from my contributions to this thread.

Last edited by Otter - on 29 September 2021