I like how Nintendo failing at something necessarily means that any person who attempts something similar is also doomed to fail. How about if a company charges a fair price, and has great games for sale, even at launch? I don't think Vita is getting a fair shake here.

I personally think there still is and will be for a while be a space for a dedicated gaming handheld. Smaller in the future, no doubt, but there will be a market. The same way, for instance, that some game genres like sidescrollers or point and click adventure games sell less but still find a market.

The companies just have to find a good way to profit from this smaller market.

I think both devices will be successful, though not as much as in past generations.

I don't know what is going to happen ... For the past several weeks I have been wondering how the eroding value of the American dollar (in comparison to the Yen) was going to impact the strategies of Sony and Nintendo.

I assumed that the 3DS was priced at $250 because the American Dollar fell from being worth 120 yen in 2005 to 80 yen in 2011 which ‘should’ cause a 50% increase in the price of Japanese goods in America, and Nintendo wanted a buffer against further exchange rate changes. If Nintendo had maintained this price I was envisioning Sony using a combination of their strategy with the PSP and PS3 to have the PS Vita at a higher price at retail (to compensate for a poor exchange rate) while still being able to claim that the system was $250; effectively, Sony wouldn't (really) manufacture the $250 PS Vita, and the 3G PS Vita would be sold in a manditory bundle for $350.

With the 3DS being sold for $170 it seems unlikely that Sony could be effective with a bait-n-switch pricing strategy because buying a system with more features than you want with a game you don't want for almost $200 more than your competition hardly seems like much of a value.


For those who don't understand ...

If Sony decided they could sell the PS-Vita at $250/$300 with an acceptable loss under the assumption of an average dollar value of 80 yen over the first year and the dollar falls to be worth (on average) around 75 yen for the first year Sony will lose around $16/$20 more per system than they initially anticipated; and if the dollar devalued even further to be worth 70 yen on average Sony would lose around $35/$42 more per system.

This may not sound like a lot of money but when you also included lost revenue from exchange rate changes across their entire product line including system sales, software sales, accessory sales, and licensing fees the net effect on the companies financials (which are the basis for projecting the loss they could accept on the system) the company may be in a position where they can't tolerate the loss they anticipated while facing a larger loss than they calculated.

This is the issue that execs at Nintendo (well at least one) brought up, specifically naming the threat that cheap apps have had with the industry.  I think there is much concern about the future of the industry in light of this.  I am targetin an Android tablet to get as my next electronic device, as a gift.  I will pay more, but I find it important I have the ability to carry the rules to games I created with me, around.  The new price point is tempting, but it boils down to essentials.

The thing about games is that it isn't the price you pay that determines value, it is what you get out of it.  And it is possible to get hours of gameplay and fun, from less production value.  People do commit a lifetime to play chess and Go, and you can play chess with a $1 chess set you get in a dollar store.

As far as what it means for the Vita, I see someone posted a thread I was pondering about.  I have no idea here at all what it means.

Well I was waiting for Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, and Super Mario 3DS to come out anyways before I bought a Nintendo 3DS. So a price cut by the end of September, if I read correctly, is just icing on the cake for me .

Hard to believe they cut the price world wide by that much so soon, even if the 3DS was not selling all that well. So i doubt that this was done to hurt the Vita, a $30 to $50 cut or even heavy bundling would have suffice if that was the case.
It seems very desperate, but good luck to them for our sake i hope this pays off because the last company we need hurting in the hand held bizz is Nintendo, their downturn could crash the handheld market.

Personally i think this means Vita is in serious trouble in the UK. To the point where it might actually be dead on arrival.

For those that don't know Europe and more specific UK are having to pay £279.99 for the Vita. That is $455.

With the 3DS getting "a third off in Europe" would put it at around £120 or $196. Still more then what the US pay but a lot better then it's current £180 price. By the time Vita comes out here 3DS could be sold by some places for around £100.

Sony will have to justify why people from the UK would have to pay double what the 3DS cost to get a Vita. Especially when if you look at it you can get an xbox for £130 and a PS3 for £180. Meaning a Vita will cost almost as much as a 360 and PS3 COMBINED. Only around £100 less then buying an okish 3d tv. Almost double the price of an Ipod touch, around the same price as an iphone 3gs, almost the same price as a Samsung R730 laptop, only £20 less then a Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab and so on and so on.

The point is there are a lot of products around that price range. A lot of portable devices that in some regards can do a lot more then what a Vita can.
The main reason to get a Vita is obviously the games. But other then Uncharted there is not much coming to it. Sure you can talk about games like LittleBigPlanet and Mod racers but nobody is going to put almost £300 on the counter so they can play those games. You might as'well just buy a PS3 and save yourself £100.

It is a lot of money and i think what has happened to the 3DS is what will happen to the Vita in UK.

I will pick up a DS when it hits the £99 point because at that point it will have a few decent games i.e mario land, Mario Kart, Kid Icarus and that new Resident Evil game. But i won't pick up a Vita until it is more in line with the US prices. It will cost $250 in US on release. In £ that would be £150. Meaning in US your getting it almost half price in comparison to everywhere else.

Setting the price so high in the UK could seriously damage it. People won't pay that here. They didn't pay £499 when the PS3 launched and it then got a huge price cut just a few months later. Since then it has always been 2nd to the 360. The same pattern could happen again but this time with the 3DS.

A £120 3ds will murder a £279 Vita in the UK.

None of them could... they're all first party Nintendo games and are exclusive to Nintendo's hand helds.  

(Yes, I know what you meant  )

Now this battle has turned into something that looks a lot like the DS vs. PSP battle, but I think Nintendo actually shot themselves in the foot with the 3DS. If you look at it, there's not really much to tell the 3DS apart from a DSi, functionally at least. You have the analogue slider, the 3D and SpotPass as the only really unique functionality compared to the DSi.

Compared to the Vita, there are a few more selling points, like the dual screen setup, but compared to the DSi, you have some improved controls, improved online and motion controls, all of which can be found with the competition. The Vita has better controls and probably (since we don't know exactly what it will be like) comparable or better online functionality and comparable motion controls. And compared to smartphones, the physical controls and unique online are the only real selling points.

Having tried the 3D briefly, I'm not really sold on it. It didn't do much for the experience and gave me a slight headache, so if I get a 3DS, I'll probably end up turning the 3D of most of the time. So for me, that leaves only one selling point in the hardware and that's SpotPass. I don't consider that much of a selling point at all though, especially since it seems the Vita will have something resembling it with a better online implementation on top of that.

So the 3DS has only three advantages over the competing hardware the way I see it. Price, games and package. Price and games are self explanatory (hopefully), and the package is the total functionality the 3DS holds against any single platform. Nintendo shot themselves in the foot by not including any killer functionality in the 3DS (although they hoped the 3D would be it).

What does all this mean for the Vita? I don't know, but what I do know is that Sony are playing this game much better than Nintendo is.

The Vita is looking like a much more well planned device than the 3DS, and has plenty of functionality to make it distinct from its predecessor while solving many of its problems as well. I don't know if the price will mean the Vita will take a beating, but the hardware combined with a good launch lineup of games, should make the Vita good competition.

And I can't help but feel that Sony have a much better lock on their target audience than Nintendo does. Sony are making slick gaming hardware with the games to appeal to the users they know they are strong with, whereas I feel Nintendo have a greater risk of losing their more casual audience to smartphones. They haven't provided a whole lot of games yet (although they're coming), but I think the Brain Training-crowd is more prone to simply using their phones for gaming.

I'm not sure what Nintendo is trying to do with the 3DS, and it feels like maybe Nintendo aren't sure either. The pricecut allows them to focus more on their "casual" audience, but it still feels like a bit of a skizophrenic effort, and if they don't find a clear target and go for it, they will lose out to smartphones and Vita.

That the 3DS will finally be able to compete.
As it looked prior, the Vita would've trashed it. There is exceedingly more value in it.