Game looks interesting. Surprised they didn't use Recettear as a comparison...

At least he's taking his time with it... i like a slow but well done review than a rushed "is-for-vita-so-it-sucks" one like allways on IGN... And I doubt it will change my thinks on buying or not the game... Right i'm struglling because not sure if buy FW or Senran Kagura on physical..  TALKING ABOUT A HARD DECISION!

Good news about Makai trillion :D

Well, I don't know where else you would put it. Of course they can't control third parties, but they can certainly do a lot to encourage third party investments. Sony had to know what the software situation was looking like long before they ever launched the thing, and that it was absolutely dire. Any system's success or failure is determined well before it hits the market. Before it is announced, even. Without a commitment for GTA, or Final Fantasy, or Resident Evil, or Metal Gear, or Monster Hunter, they had none of the big guns that have driven Playstation's success for the past two decades now. The easiest time they would ever have getting a commitment for such system selling games would be before the Vita launches when it could still potentially be a success, because after it launches and flops without them, no one was going to touch the Vita with a ten foot pole. Which is exactly what happened.

Unless you count f2p stuff and weird little apps, SCEJ has released on average about one new game per year on the Vita. They did squeeze out two this year (three, if you cound Soul Sacrifice Delta, which I don't). I don't know what I expect out of them exactly, but it's more than they've produced. Especially since they are more of a publisher than an in-house developer, I think they should be able to ramp it up. Not like they've been rocking the PS4 all that hard this year, either, however godlike Knack was. Less concerning than their actual output thus far is the fact that they are completely silent about the Vita after Freedom Wars, and since Shu has intimated that we shouldn't expect any more big productions on the Vita from Sony, I tend to think that means SCEJ, too.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/company/99366-sce-japan-studio?platform=109&year=0&region=2&devpub=0

Yeah, what were you expecting out of a single studio in a single region out of three. I don't know where the basis for your expectations are coming from, but I feel studio japan is doing an excellent job. Have you actually played delta? There two times as much contents as the original so how can it not be considered. for the record polyphony only ever released a single game for the psp.

And you haven't answered how is it feasible for western big publishers to release games on the vita without sony moneyhatting. For a portion of the number of sales and a portion of the price of their console counterpart, how is that market even worth considering? Releasing a single game specifically for the vita versus releasing multiplatform across ps4, xbox and pc. If I'm a publisher, I would be raving mad to go antwhere near the vita. If western support is not there, square enix, capcom and konami, who are focused on the international market have no reason to follow.

You seem to be confusing SCEJ with just Japan Studio. The latter is but a small part of the former.

I didn't realize there was any question about western publishers because they don't really do handhelds and haven't done them in years. They aren't even interested in the 3DS. And hell, at least western publishers coughed up Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty (such as it was) in the Vita's first year. No similarly large Japanese franchises showed up, and that despite having a lot more viability on a handheld platform. So I'm not sure I follow you there. Sony goofed big time by not making any effort to corral substantial Japanese support. All their efforts were on western games, and that turned out to be as horribly misguided as anyone with even a cursory understanding of the market knew it would be.

http://www.worldwidestudios.net/locations/japan

There are only two first party studios in Japan: Japan Studio and polyphony. Polyphony only released a single game for the psp. In fact I'd say japan studio is doing a much better job more that ever.

If western publishers aren't interested in the vita, then how do you propose sony get GTA on it. And if western support and thus sales are non existent, how are they supposed to convince square enix, konami, capcom to put their games on the vita. I'll tell you the reason why the vita failed to the 3ds as many times as I need to. Sony is not nintendo. They don't have mario, pokemon, and zelda that appeal to both the east and the west. Not to mention different target audiences.

The whole reason sony create first party games is to sell their hardware and thus gain third party support. If making western first party games cannot attract western third party games, then there's no reason to. Nintendo create hardware TO sell their games. Their strategies and target make them hardly comparable. The 3ds is not a measure of the vita's failure. The psp is.

SCEJ has made their mark by doing 2nd party work with different developers outside of Sony. Millenium Kitchen (My Summer Vacation), Level 5 (White Knight and Dark Cloud), From Software (demon's souls and bloodborne), Clap Hanz (Hot Shots), Capcom (deep down), etc.

There are plenty others, but you shouldn't pidgeonhole the entire division into Japan Studio (which in reality, is made up of several teams and studios) and Polophony.

Once again, I'm not talking about their internal studios. I'm talking about SCEJ as a publisher. They used to be a very active publisher of third party developed games, but SCEJ fell into serious neglect somewhere between Sony getting embroiled in a war with Microsoft over the western market and the death of the PSP. Now a lot of their former collaborators are best buddies with Nintendo (Level-5), primarily make mobile games now (Media Vision), or have gone out of business altogether.

Let's forget all this about western developers because it's quite tangential to my main point, which is that Sony decided to launch a system for which they either didn't (my opinion) or couldn't (your opinion, apparently) get sufficient developer support. That is absolutely Sony's fault, and no one else's. And as someone who paid for a handheld system in its own right and not a PS4 accessory, I find it irritating in the extreme that Sony tries to convince me that the Vita is the latter rather than the former and tells me to forget about them developing any substantial new games for it.

Yeah, true enough. I just looked through the games they published during the psp era and compared to the vita, it wasn't exactly flattering. 

My god, the translation is terrible in Hollow Fragment!! I'm not entirely fluent in Chinese, but I much rather play in that language where it'll make actual sense than on my native language where the translation was seemingly done on Google.