All they need to do is cut the price of the hardware to increase its installed userbase and marketshare. Sony can offer to throw money at publishers all over the place but it's not going to help with software sales.

The 3DS had trouble getting started as well and is doing fine now.

Here's what will happen; sooner or later Monster Hunter will come to the platform, and when it does, everyone in Japan, along their dogs, their cats, and their unborn children will buy a Vita. There's no way Capcom will keep such a big franchise exclusive. It may not be MH4, but even Portable 4th or something will pretty much save the Vita single handedly.

But you don't know until you try. Extablished IP's are pure bonus money that add to all the work you put into the game. It would be foolish to release "floating city shooter" when you just can slap "Bioshock Infinite" on it and increase the sales tenfold just with the name.

Fair enough, but people are looking for new themes, and new experiences. If you slap on Bioshock and it's something else, people may be in complete bioshock and you ruin both opportunities.

Take the case of AC when it first came out. Why didn't they just continue with PoP? Odds are they had enough new ideas to make a brand new series and promote it standalone, without having to slap PoP onto it. So, AC ended up one of the best-selling IPs this gen.

Ultimately you can't just have marketing or a great game, you need both. But in the end, the marketing could pay off and spare hurting an existing brand name and a brand new idea. It can also increase the number of brands a publisher has in its pocket. Finally, it's what does happen, as we've seen the birth of series such as Bioshock, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed and many other new IPs this gen which took center stage. So, to only rely on pre-existing brand names would be prone to missing the boat. I think Vita would do well to try to be the platform holder for the next big new IPs so as to challenge the 3DS.

PoP was a tired franchise when Assassins Creed was developed. It wouldve done more harm than good. Creating a new IP is always a risk but seriously, PoP was never really big and the name PoP never stood for a sure fire success so there really was no need to slap that name on this game. Bioshock still has a lot of milk to give and a big fanbase so it would be stupid to leave this money on the street and try their chances with a new IP.

@chandler.

Bioshock:

Prince of Persia:

I'd say it's pretty close (of course 3 entries over 2 but those are the figures atm). Also, Assassin's creed didn't even exist when it succeeded, so a series succeeding or failing based on the performance of a previous entry is not always the right metric (in this occurrence saying that PoP would not be a good brand to use since the brand was dying).

The PoP sales declined on every plattform through those 3 games. Bioshock reached comparable sales numbers with 4 games less. The PoP:TT numbers are pathetic for an established IP. Bioshock only has two entries and yes, the second entry sold less than the first, but you can not extrapolate a trend out of two games. And it still sold like 3,43 Million copies, that's pretty decent even after the decline. I would like to see new IP's too but Bioshock clearly still has some appeal left that can be converted into money.

Had AC been released as some rehash of PoP, I wouldn't be surprised if it sold as much, if not more. With brand decay, it could have sold less, yet with all the marketing I would doubt as much.

All I'm trying to say is that it may not have been the best solution whether it helped or didn't, as it could deviate the tradition of a brand and choke the possibility of natural growth we see in new IPs.

I was just saying two things. 1) The "slap a brand name on it" technique is not fool-proof, and can lead to many problems. 2) That you can't judge the value of an IP necessarily on its latest sales, the latest entries could have suffered from poor marketing or could have simply been mediocre follow-ups. An IP has an intrinsic value that goes beyond one implementation or another (PoP 3D will say as much, the one by RedOrb).

@ kitler53

AC Liberation, COD, and LBP should all be million sellers.

In fact Liberation will be a million seller this year alone as long as its not terrible

That means than half of all Vita users must buy all of these games. Do you really believe that?

I think none of these games will reach a million. They could be lucky if they hit the 500.000. Even Uncharted managed only 650.000!