Did piracy force the 8th gen handhelds to come early?

Playstationfan12

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Playstationfan12 on 31 July 2013

Well one things for sure that the millions of pirates on the psp is most likely the reason for those expensive vita memory cards. I do agree that sony rushed the vita out so they wouldn't lets the 3ds get too much market share

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mysticwolf on 31 July 2013

Technically it was only about 9 years since when the GameBoy was released and when the GameBoy Color Came out. This is the cutoff because the GBC is not just a redesign, but a new system. A new handheld.

But you may have a point, as back then I doubt there was access to ROMs and the like, as there is today. Along with the recession, this is why we may be seeing shorter gens.

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NoirSon on 31 July 2013

RolStoppable said:
Certainly not.

1) The 3DS launched 6.25 years after the DS, that's definitely a reasonably long gap between these two systems. The PSV launched 7 years after the PSP.

2) PSP software sales were notably worse than the DS's, but the PSP received third party support for a longer timeframe.

Nintendo's motivation to launch a new handheld was that third parties in Japan (where the majority of important handheld games come from) shifted in a major way to the PSP which was going to impact software sales on the DS negatively. The reason for the 3DS's high price is that Nintendo's goal was to destroy the PSP and its successor. That's why the 3DS is such a not Nintendo-like handheld, because it was designed with a different philosophy than the previous ones.

Meanwhile, Sony was leaning back, because the PSP was doing well in Japan, taking almost all the third party support away from Nintendo and bringing in the money. I think Sony didn't even release a PSP game in 2011, save for an Invizimals game in Europe. Sony certainly didn't expect Nintendo to be so aggressive, they thought they just had to put out a PSP successor and things will go in their favor from there (i.e. third parties flocking to them, so no reason to build an installed base with first party software). The PSV's design is nothing out of the ordinary for Sony, neither is its price. It's pretty much a straightforward evolution of the PSP.

Lastly, the only way in which Nintendo force-choked the DS was by not launching the system in more countries.

This.

The way the Japanese developer support was shifting to the PSP after Capcom's success with Monster Hunter and the rise of Visual Novels/Date Sim and other genres not easily compressed into the standard DS cart, the world embracing network/mobile gaming, Nintendo had to release the 3DS and Sony probably wanted to try fresh with Vita in areas outside of Japan where the PSP was near or already dead.

I think had the PSP not got a second wind at the end in Japan, the 3DS wouldn't have been released for a year or two, because they would have been able to milk the DS/DSi for longer. However, before the 3DS was even announced the shift in focus was apparent and Nintendo knew they needed a more modern device to compete with Sony and the new powerful mobile market.