But isn't smartphones wide spread in Japan as well?

Not sure, but they are well known for loving their portables. For instance, Super Mario 3D Land has already outsold Super Mario Galaxy 1/2 in Japan.

By bold you mean the software vision, on the long run?

In terms of firmware, I know that the Vita has the PSN, and the 3DS has the e-shop. One thing I know for certain is that the e-shop was highly successful from the get-go. We've read it said that the e-shop has a high user subscription and visit rate. I remember being one such customer. There are social features on both and I think they're comparable. Granted, the Mii Plaza was taken from the Wii mentality and art direction, so it's a win whichever way you put it, but I still believe the Vita has some very compelling social features as well (not 100% sure though).

There also were games that were more compelling for the 3DS than for the Vita I believe, in terms of broader appeal. LBP2 is to come out for the Vita, and that was one such title, but it hasn't released yet.

As for why (the USP)? Why the Vita? I would say because it is convenient, consumable (small), portable (within the house if you will, if not on the go), and reasonably affordable. I believe that if it were priced a little below 200$ and properly marketed it would be doing much better atm.

my 2 cents, they aren't worth alot tbh, I'm neither a dedicated Sony fan, neither a Vita owner, mostly a Nintendo fan. I do see possibilities but I'm not sure Sony is handling things right tbh.

oh snap...!

It's sad to see how the West has succumbed to mobile gaming... I never play anything on my phone! well, like 5 minutes a month :P

edit, Wrong thread.

How is it bad? Is it something in the link? The OP seems to be perfectly fine.

That isn't the whole reason. 3DS and Vita just don't seem to have much appeal in the West. Other than the Mario Games. Japan has many more games than the West does so it is doing better over there. USA isn't bad but Europe is horrible. (Despite it being near US's sales.) It should pick up this Holiday, a lot, though.

Also a very high percentage a Japanese spend a lot of time on the train. The average office worker in Tokyo spends two hours commuting to work, round trip. This gives them more time to play longer games and opens the doors up for more portable playtime.

Square Enix is one of those compaies that goes where the sales are. In that case, it won't happen.

That's the thing. He went on to say in the same interview that the 3DS had the same problem at launch. Selective quoting is awesome though.

"When we launched the 3DS hardware we didn't have Super Mario 3D Land, we didn't have Mario Kart 7, we didn't have Kid Icarus: Uprising,"

"We were striving to have all of these ready for the launch, but we weren't able to deliver them at that time. We were kind of hoping that people would, nevertheless, buy into the product, find 3DS hardware promising, but looking back we have to say we realise the key software was missing when we launched the hardware."