Yeah, let's all do that... wait and see for anything. Why bother talking anything if anything can happen? Maybe Sony will buy Apple, so there it is, not in a bad situation anymore. We're talking about things that can help Vita escape that dreadful sales zone it's in, and everybody almost agree it's based in one game, Monster Hunter.

And did you know MH did not start as big as it is today, so even a new magical unpredictable IP will take time to settle itself as a blockbuster.

- and that is unbelievably short sighted and rather stupid

- of course I know it's the whole basis of my point if anyone bother reading what I posted, and my problem is with all the geniuses who think no game can ever do that..... EVER

They don't want to see it ;)

You again with " ;) ". It's not that witty, you know?
This is getting ridiculous! See what? Please enlighten us how would you bring Vita's sales to a healthy level in japan in 2012. What would you do sitting in the CEO chair? Remember, it's the worst selling japanese console since the dreamcast there!

Well, yes actually, I would expect MH to be as big (over time) on PSV as it was on PSP. Has MH suddenly taken a major downturn in popularity? Quite the opposite in fact. The MH franchise has increased in popularity on PSP with each suceeding title. It's very reasonable to expect an exclusive PSV MH title to be very popular on PSV and convince many MH fans to buy a PSV.

Try using some logic and objectivity, rather than sarcasm, when analysing future sales prospects. The only way to peer into the future is to look at what has gone before and  think about how the past influences and predicts the future. Fact: no new IP introduced for PSP was hugely popular in Japan, none. Monster Hunter was the only one, single, no other to sell multi-million units. Not even very high quality existing franchise titles like MGS, with some MH tie in stuff, or a Kingdom Hearts spin off could manage sales comparable to MH.

The probability, therefore, that new IP introduced for PSV this year, or next, will become hugely popular and drive a major increase in sales is quite low. So far, while it's early days yet, no new IP has really captured the attention of gamers. The probability of an exclusive MH title driving sales of PSV (especially driving people to convert from PSP to PSV) is quite high, certainly higher than a new IP doing this. Therefore with these probabilities in mind the negative effect on PSV's prospects of not having a MH title within the next year or so, or at least annonced, is significant. PSV will continue to sell but at fairly low numbers, and Sony will have a difficult time significantly increasing PSV sales in Japan.

Sony can do a lot by transferring several moderately popular franchises from PSP to PSV: God Eater, Phantasy Star, some sort Gundam, and a Final Fantasy spin off. Those franchises will certainly give PSVs baseline sales a boost when put together. But none of them would have the effect MH would, even collectively.

MH in Japan for PSP is like Halo for Xbox in America. It is a key franchise for hardware sales. Losing it would be a major blow, and a non-trivial threat to PSV's long term prospects. Even moving it to multiplatform on 3DS and PSV would be a significant loss. In the very least Sony would need to scramble to find a wildly popular exclusive game franchise to take its place, which if we consider all game platforms is not an easy thing to do.

It is true that the success or failure of PSV does not rest solely on MH. But it's naive to think Monster Hunter isn't important to PSV's future.

Is it possible a new IP or several new IPs will see PSV achieve PSP-like sales levels? Yes. But is it likely? Not really.

glad that we agree

Can't belive Sony was dumb enough to not have secured an exclusive Monster Hunter long before the Vita launch.

Hell even a port of that uber popular PSP version would have done wonders.

You guys do know that Monster Hunter isn't a new IP right? Pretty sure it started on the PS2.

Terrible Vita sales for Japan!!! The more this goes on, the more I see a lot of Japanese companies concentrating their efforts on the 3DS. It'll only get worse when the Wii U releases as it'll have to compete with two of Nintendo's systems instead of one!

MH didn't just come out of nowhere, it took quite a while for it to become the mega hit it is today, the momentum slowly built up over years and sales kept going up and became more and more front loaded as time went on. The vita is in big trouble, it doesn't look like it will do as well as the PSP. It won't simply just die off though, Sony does have a fairly strong base support and there should be plenty of ports.