This is the way I perceive Vita's troubles in the West (especially in N.America): It has no games!!
Seriously, I believe that we here are a bit biased, and from the writings in this thread alone - a bit too niche!In 2014 alone, I have purchased: Danganronpa, Conception II, Deception 4: Blood Ties, Dynasty Warriors 8, Sorcery Saga: TCOTGCG, Toukiden and Football Manager 2014. Right now, I have preordered: Akiba's Trip, Danganronpa 2 and Neptunia PP, with many many similar titles to add to that list.
Those games sell relatively OK, but they always sell to existing owners. There is very little incentive for casuals to pick up the console.
I'm very interested to see if Football Manager bundle can drum up some business in the UK. Borderlands 2 probably will not in the US, it's an old game, and while it might shift some units, it will probably just replace the old model and keep selling poorly.
If you look at NA top sellers, people buy CoD, AssCreed, Uncharted, Mortal Kombat, Madden, Need for Speed, heck even Unit 13, with a few Japanese titles liberally sprinkled around them.
I'm European, but even here, when I hear peple talking about Vita games, they all say: "Well, I've finished Killzone and CoD, Ass Creed as well, I have nothing more to play. Nothing is coming out!"
And while I wholeheartedly appreciate all the efforts put into localizing Japanese games, sparing me the need to start learning Japanese in my 40s, Sony really needs to start pushing western titles (shooters and sports mainly) much much more aggresively in order to gain any foothold in the West.
I wouldn't mind, because we would still have all these great 3rd party localizations coming our way, but at least the general audience would now have the reason to see Vita as a viable option.
Also, I place a lot of the blame on the complete failure of expalining and pushing "Remote Play". For a feature that was heavily emphasized at E3, and shown numerous times up to this date, it is sad to see that Vita does about 2.5% of PS4 sales. Absolutely miserable attach rate for a feature touted as a game-changer (in a way).
I know that Sony's strategy was market penetration at a lower price, and I can see that a part of Vita's troubles is low market share of PS3 in the US, which Sony needed to rectify. Better past sales would have certainly produced a $549 PS4+Vita bundle, but I believe that was too big of a risk for Sony to take, and lose the price advantage over XOne.
But, it is what it is. Quality niche titles for us are Sony's bread and butter in Japan, so as long as Vita continues to gain ground over there, we don't have to worry about any doom scenarios over here.
