This will be a general split between Japan and the West as I feel Sony has two extreme visions for the two.  Any input will be helpful.  

With the recent price drop and spate of games releasing in Japan, I feel that the Vita is finally getting its footing, but is a long way from being at any reasonable level.

Here are a couple of changes that Sony could implement (Japan First):

1. Booster its Japanese first party development core.  While I feel that Japan Studio comes up with some very unique games and Poly comes out with the best racing simulator, they need to bolster their core development for games in Japan to like five to ten. Create or buy smaller studios.  I think Marvelous AQL would be perfect buy.  Not only would they get a good developer in Marvelous (Soul Sacrifice) but a good localization team in Xseed for Sony's (and third party) games.

2. Alter price cut.  I feel that being the exact price as a 3DS LL would have been better for the Vita, change the price from 19.9 to 18.9k YEN

3.Redesign.  The redesign would focus more on incorporating the ability to use any memory format for the handheld.  That would drive the primany sales higher as there would be no real hidden cost to purchase the handheld.

What do you think?  Ill add the west later this afternoon.

hmm i dunno. That all sounds a bit much.
Of course, if the IPs coming out doesn't help the sales, I guess we will have to come up with something.
Again, I think if we see a pricecut, it'll happen around march 31, so one month to go.

The memory cards won't change. The games are designed with the proprietary format in mind. SD would be a slight downgrade and I'm not sure how games would run. All Sony needs to do is drop the price of those cards. I understand they are trying to maintain profits, and a new form of memory card is more expensive to produce, but over time the price should really come down. The sad thing is if the Vita would have sold more at its start the memory would be cheaper already.

$15 (4GB) - $25 (8GB) - $40 (16GB) - $70 (32GB) Would be a better pricing structure and one they could probably keep for a while.

i like the ideas. mainly #1

The Vita really just needs a game to sell it. It has an excellent library, but no big sellers. GOW, GTA, or GT would get the Vita off the ground. It has a good library right now to back up one of those games. Couple that with a 50 dollar price ecut in the west, and they will sell.

#1 A version with cellular technology has to be available. Even if it is a non android, non windows mobile phone, they need it. No library of games can compete with this one feature. It is a matter of convenience. Do people need a Vita? No. Do people need a phone? For the most part, yes. Put the two together, and you have a convenient feature on a phone that no other company can match. A game library that has the potential to bring 70M+ consumers.

#2 Bring original, smaller titles to the device. Yes, mobile needs to have the likes of Gran Turismo, God of War, and Uncharted, but that is not the experience most people can enjoy on a daily bases, on the go. Titles like LocoRoco, and Patapon are a great direction for mobile. Keep a focus on very high quality grab and go titles, and promote them well.

#3 Make it compatible with every other Sony device. Make it a 1 to 1 controller of every device through apps for each product. This should already be common among Sony devices, but if they want to make the big push somewhere the Vita is the ultimate place to start.

#4 Follow the Pay plan market, tiered pricing, and yearly releases. This keeps the product freash, allows the addition of more RAM, more storage, and an all around improved device. Thanks to the yearly release allowing newest hardware to be sold at break even or profit, and PlayStation software, they can sell the prvious models at a decent loss to help expand the market.

This may be exactly what everybody else is doing, but Sony has that 70M+ user base of PlaySatation gamers to tap into. No other company has the ability to bring games to the table in the cell phone market like Sony does. They are the only hardware company that has the advantage of an in house world class development studio, movie studio, and music studio.

In all honesty, this should have been happening at Sony since 2006 with PSP and PS3. They had the chance to never let Apple, Samsung, or Microsoft get a foothold, and they pissed it away. This may be the last chance they ever get to make a push to be viable once again. They need to pull out all the stops.

Thats where option 3 comes in, a redesign where they focus on allowing any memory card would be beneficial.  Sony would lose out on the large margins those cards bring, but would get that back in greater hardware and software revenue and potentially a cloud based game holding service.

You have to compete where the battles can be won.  The current memory card situation is not optimal.  In an era where storage is cheap, Sony is trying to exploit that (whether intentional or non intentional, they did have their first handheld pirated to death)

You ignore read/write time changes that could break games. The memory stays. The damage is done. Now only reducing the price matters.

For our version for option 1.  I feel that the NGage/xperia play  pretty much  doomed the dedicated phone/gaming device combination for long term success. No matter what people would say, i feel that having two not really optimal device join forces would make a even more worthless device.  Each device serves it function and the downsides of both really do not play well together (battery life, space)