Ok'sh start in the West, but the next few weeks are important for the Vita

I see. That's not good at all. I thought they meant 2 million retail + 2 million digital.

You aren't really long on this site, are you?

Are you saying nobody knows what they're talking about on this site. If so, mostly true.

There's no way that is true, the total expense would be just too high especially considering the time of year. 45k is pretty low and I suspect it surely did far better than that in the UK at least.

the only thing I can't comprehend is how a few people actually believed the pr statement meant 2mil retail and 2mil download.  Believe me sony would have been proudly boasting if digital sales were matching retail and vita's tie ratio was already higher than the psp's. 

Why do people keep saying you can't compare vita launch to psp launch due to price difference. Correct me if I'm wrong but the psp launched at the same price as the vita did in the west.

http://psp.ign.com/articles/584/584983p1.html

Considering how much better the psp sold initially despite sony having 0 hardware precense at the time. And people can't even say its because the ps2 was so successful. The DS and PS2 being the most successful consoles in history didn't prevent the 3ds and ps3 from being extremly unsuccessful launches so ps2 being successful obviously doesn't translate to psp being successful by default. Ofc the psvita could very well recover and end up selling very very well. But anyone who thinks this is a good launch must have very low expectations.

It's a very reasonable expectation.

Vita is competing with psp, ds, 3ds, and smartphones. PSP was only competing with DS.

Also, your logic about ps2/psp correlation is not very well thought out. PSP came out during the ps2's lifetime, it was seen as the ps2 portable. It most certainly had a lot to do with it, unless you believe that it's just brand name that sold the system.

The problem with 3DS is that it's competing with the still extremely popular DS, and to add to the fact, just before launch, there was the ds large screen, and the DSi. 3DS was quickly seen by the mainstream as simply "another version of DS". This is a reason I expect the wiiU name to change. So, while you may think the 3ds had a bad launch, it's really not that far from what ds and psp launched at, and considering that it's competing not only against increased competition, but it's own name, it was a good start. It was the slow trail afterwards that was bad.

I mean, think about it. Had 3DS sold even just a bit more than the DS, people would say it's great sales, and someone would say "it's especially good considering the current handheld environment. People are saying that handheld consoles were going to die, guess this proves them wrong". And he'd be right to say that. Of course, he is still right to say it, as 3DS has sold really well this past year.

Both launches are very good. It's the next months that are important to watch.

2 milion is very good for 1,2 milions consoles sold - previous gen handhelds had attach rates of around 5 lifetime.

That's way lower than I expected, but I still don't think 2 million is very good for 1,2 million consoles. More like average or something, and average is not good. To me, at least.

It is higher than average though. 3DS attach rate was below one for quite a while. I remember people were discussing why people buy the console with no games. The attach rate at Japanese launch was 0.95 if memory serves me right. So actually it is quite good.