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Forums - Sony - Is the PS Vita the Concorde of Handhelds? - IGN

brendude13 on 27 February 2012

I can see why he said people will refuse to pay a premium for a software, but what about hardware? Most smartphones these days are going for £300-500, or £200-£400 a year for a contract, yet every kid has one. It's not down to affordability, it's just down to the fact that not many people care about playing real games and are not willing to pay a high price for a dedicated portable.

Back in the day, if a casual gamer wanted to play games, they had to buy a dedicated console and ended up playing REAL high budget games. There was no inbetween, they either played proper games or they didn't. Smart phones have created a middle ground for these so called "gamers", they can now play games without forking out a lot of money, they might be shitty, over-rated little arcade games that keep you entertained for about 5 minutes, but that's all they need.



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kitler53 on 27 February 2012
Acevil said:
kitler53 said:
...

Lumines:  Vita: $35  iphone: Free (ad based) or $2.99.

everyone is saying this game is amazing and such but really?!?  really, really!?!?    i just don't think i can justify it on vita..

smaller stuff sure but it had better be priced like smaller stuff and apple has now set the standard on what pricing smaller stuff means.  this is the problem that vita/3DS will find moving forward.  how do they get design games and get the customer to understand that a higher price is justified.  for camera's it's easy, just but the tech specs in front of the customer.  for games were value is purely subjective...it'll be a challange.


True story: My friend got a Vita just for Lumines. He already owns like three or four versions of it. 

wow, i can't imagine that logic.  but anyhoo, the hype on the vita version did get me to download the free iphone version.  haven't gotten a chance to play it yet but maybe i'll change my mind.  i think there is a demo of it on vita that should allow me to make a pretty direct comparision of what both versions offer.   ..but $35...it's just seems soo much for what it is (based off of seeing videos).



kitler53 on 27 February 2012
RolStoppable said:
kitler53 said:

I personally don't think it's going to fall in line with the IP itself (as i'm think you're implying).  Loco Roco is first party but the game itself doesn't distinguish itself from rolando (imo) and i really doubt i'd buy it for vita.  i bought brain age for the DS but i'd never buy it for 3Ds when brain trainer is free on iphone. 

first party games will get just as devalued imo by the cheap smartphone iterations unless the gameplay itself distinguished from what smartphones can do.  at the very least, my view of both vita and 3DS games has become quite devalued.

Not every IP can be adequately ported to smartphones, but some will be identical and others at least close enough to make the 3DS or Vita version look highly overpriced.

There's more to games than just gameplay, an interesting game universe can easily prevent a hit game from being threatened by clones.

i can't say i disagree with any of that ... i still think nintendo/sony have an interesting challenge to communicate that to consumers.  it's not like i think smartphones are going to make the 3DS/vita implode entirely but i wouldn't be surprised if they both lost ~20% of their market GenOverGen.



Zlejedi on 27 February 2012
HappySqurriel said:
Zlejedi said:
HappySqurriel said:

I'm not surprised that elitests gamers love the technology behind the PS-Vita (I think it is pretty impressive myself) but I think it may end up falling flat within the broader market primarily because it is not designed to take into consideration the needs of the broader market.

Which might actually be a gamble that pays off.

NDS and PSP had total userbase of over 200 milions and tragic attachment ratio or 4-5 games sold per console.

Now if Vita is succesfull among core gamers only and reaches 20-30 milions of userbase but that userbase buys 10-20 games each over the lifetime of machine with let's say 1/3 of game sales coming from digital store at twice the profit of high street sales for publisher that would be very viable market to support with games.


Except that it will never work out that way ...

While they can make it more and more of a "dream machine" to these high end gamers, they probably will not see a significant increase in game sales because (while these high end gamers do buy more games) the high end gamers are more likely to own multiple systems and will be buying/playing games on those systems rather than on the PS-Vita.

Essentially, while there are people who buy 20+ games a year the vast majority of them will own multiple platforms and will be selectively playing the best games available for the PC, XBox 360, PS3, Wii, PS-Vita, iPhone and 3DS; and even though they think the PS-Vita is way better than the 3DS they still won't be buying more than 5 or 6 games a year for it. Even if they do buy more games they're far more likely to be involved in buying/selling used games than the mass-market gamer meaning that Sony doesn't see the benefit from these game sales.

Except you greatly overestimate multi system ownership - people who have pc/ps3/x360/wii and iphone/3ds/psc are rare.

Most will have one-two home systems and maybe one handheld+phone.



PROUD MEMBER OF THE PSP RPG FAN CLUB

Degausser on 27 February 2012

I like this article and analogy. I think the camera sales stuff is interesting, I've always viewed this iphone / android market thing not so much as a threat to handheld consoles but an opportunity. There's more people playing handheld games today then ever before - the addressable market is bigger then ever. All you got to do now is convince them they want a Vita or 3DS.



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Zlatan.R on 27 February 2012

I love my vita



HappySqurriel on 27 February 2012
Zlejedi said:
HappySqurriel said:
Zlejedi said:
HappySqurriel said:

I'm not surprised that elitests gamers love the technology behind the PS-Vita (I think it is pretty impressive myself) but I think it may end up falling flat within the broader market primarily because it is not designed to take into consideration the needs of the broader market.

Which might actually be a gamble that pays off.

NDS and PSP had total userbase of over 200 milions and tragic attachment ratio or 4-5 games sold per console.

Now if Vita is succesfull among core gamers only and reaches 20-30 milions of userbase but that userbase buys 10-20 games each over the lifetime of machine with let's say 1/3 of game sales coming from digital store at twice the profit of high street sales for publisher that would be very viable market to support with games.


Except that it will never work out that way ...

While they can make it more and more of a "dream machine" to these high end gamers, they probably will not see a significant increase in game sales because (while these high end gamers do buy more games) the high end gamers are more likely to own multiple systems and will be buying/playing games on those systems rather than on the PS-Vita.

Essentially, while there are people who buy 20+ games a year the vast majority of them will own multiple platforms and will be selectively playing the best games available for the PC, XBox 360, PS3, Wii, PS-Vita, iPhone and 3DS; and even though they think the PS-Vita is way better than the 3DS they still won't be buying more than 5 or 6 games a year for it. Even if they do buy more games they're far more likely to be involved in buying/selling used games than the mass-market gamer meaning that Sony doesn't see the benefit from these game sales.

Except you greatly overestimate multi system ownership - people who have pc/ps3/x360/wii and iphone/3ds/psc are rare.

Most will have one-two home systems and maybe one handheld+phone.

Certainly, they are rare but so are the gamers that would buy enough games to make a platform truly viable at 20 or 30 million units sold. As a general guideline, I expect that most gamers are willing to buy 2 to 5 games per year per platform they own; being that most people are interested in only a handful of genres, as you start to buy more than a hadful of games for a particular system the relative quality of the next game on your platform drops substantially.