Wow, that's staggering. I think my heart skipped a beat. So the unreleased means either not available in the West or not out yet anywhere.

So both systems have BlazBlue, both have a StreetFighter and  Tekken, and PlayStation All-Stars is basically Sony's version of Super Smash Bros.  And 3DS has a Dead or Alive while Vita has a Marvel vs. Capcom.  Your argument then is the fact that Vita has a Mortal Kombat game shows Vita owners to be a "more complex level of gamer" than one who buys a 3DS (as far as your fighting games comparison goes)?  That's an awfully condescending viewpoint.

The reality of how similar they are doesn't really matter, not from a business standpoint. What matters is who you're trying to sell your product to. Is there overlap between the 3DS and the Vita? Definitely. However, for the most part, I don't think they're trying to appeal to the exact same audience. The style of games and services that Nintendo is going to highlight is probably different than what Sony is going to highlight, at least to a certain degree.

It's a good strategy, I think. Rather than meet the other guy head on, you come from an angle and try to carve off your own segment of the market. Sony is going to go for the hardware crowd, the tech-savvy crowd that checks out CPU specs before they buy. They're going to market brands like Assassin's Creed and CoD. Nintendo's marketing push will likely focus elsewhere.

This kind of "we're not competitors" philosophy is actually good for both companies, as they can market a different experience to people who already own another device.

At the topic, Nintendo does not concur.

I can't help but wonder how much competition Nintendo feels from the PS-Vita at this point in time ...

I don't mean to be insulting but, with how much of a lead the 3DS has and how much faster it is selling, I'd imagine that the pressure Nintendo feels from the Vita is almost insignificant.

Another thing is that the 3DS would allow them to do more with the Wii U than Vita can with the PS3 as it would as 3D to the image. I would be interesting to see if NIntendo every implements this. We could have seen a lot more DS connectivity to the Wii but it was never used.

Basil, I still don't see how they target different users other than in marketing and HW features. The games cater to largely the same audience. Escape Plan is a dark game, I agree, but it isn't complex, that it isn't. As such, Any puzzle game is as complex as it. So artistic design I'll agree it caters to the older, but not complexity really. Only thing I see is that users need to think as to how to use their environment to progress, but that's not unheard of. Soundshapes is probably as complex as VVVVV, which is on the e-shop, and the e-shop has pushmo also, a Nintendo exclusive. There are alot of complex puzzlers on top of that like Crush 3D, so once again it's not fact what you're saying.

If using marketing as your argument, I can agree to an extent, mind you many of the first 3DS ads were targeted to older male gamers here in the west, so even that's debatable. But when it comes to games, both are competing for the same audience while catering to different tastes within that audience, hence why there is still little clash at the moment, since different IPs that cater to different people are being released on both systems that oddly enough target the same audience, hence the confusion.

I think nintendo will be feeling a lot more pressure from what sony/microsoft do with the home consoles, 3ds and vita arent really competing, 3ds for kids, vita for hardcore.

Based on current sales, I would expect far more "hardcore" gamers are buying 3DS systems than the PS-Vita ...

To put numbers on it, suppose that 33% of the 3DS' userbase is 'hardcore' while 75% of the PS-Vita's userbase is 'hardcore', that means that there are roughly 5 million 'hardcore' gamers who own the 3DS compared to roughly 2 million for the PS-Vita. Realistically, with the 3DS still being a system early in its life and the userbase being made up mostly of early adopters, a more realistic estimate would have been 60% to 66% 'hardcore' gamers