Profitable and 50M+ lifetime could be a sensible goal. Anything more, so much the better.

a system is a success, in one's opinion, when it gets games one likes. Failure otherwise. Success in the market's opinion when the system is sustainable and profitable for for multiple years.


right now it's a failure. wtf sony???? where's my games!!!!!!!!

Bolded: What is an alternative to PSV, according to you?

Underlined: I couldn't understand that.

Italic: I think you are not reading carefully what I wrote. I stated that success could be a subjective matter, but, if you are trying to meassure it the Profit it makes, you are going to have to include certain variables. You can't just reduce it to income and expense, you are ignoring time and oportunity costs. For example, companies decide between different products using Net Present Value (NPV), if you are interested you could have a glimpse at that.

Look, Sony don't produce the PSV just for the pleasure of the fans, they make it to profit from it. I don't know what they were expecting when they green-lighted the project, but I can assure you that their expectations were probably in the hundreds of millions. $1 is a failure.

They could have put money into an interest bearing account and still made the Vita. That fact doesn't imply that I think they have enough money to do everything. Thanks for putting words in my mouth again though.

You're just repeating the same thing over and over without demonstrating that the Vita prevented Sony from doing any of those things that would make them more money in this "$1" scenario. Until you've proven that to be the case, your argument is pointless.

Ok.  So, here are two scenarious.  Sony has 105 million dollars dollars to spend, and the Vita costs 5 million dollar to make and support for 5 years.  To make things simple, the interest rate at banks is 100% per year.  These figures are ridiculous, but they make the math easy and don't change the point of the example.

Scenario A)  Sony invests 5 million in the Vita.  They take the other 100 million dollars in the bank .  They make 500 million dollars in profit on the money they put in the bank.  They make $1 dollar on the Vita.  At the end of the five year period, Sony has $605,000,001.  

Scenario B) Sony invests 0 dollars in the Vita, and puts 105 million dollars in the bank.  At the end of five years, Sony has $625 million dollars.

Ok, so I'm sure we could agree that 625 million dollars is more than 600 million and one dollars.  So clearly, option A was a better move.  Therefore, investing in the Vita was a bad decision.

The difference in the two figures is how Sony invests the Vita money.  It doesn't matter that Sony can also do other things.  Let's focus solely on the Vita money.  Sony can only use that money for one thing at a time.  They can either invest $5 million dollars in the Vita, or they could invest $5 million dollars in the bank.  They can't invest the same $5 million dollars in both the Vita and the bank.  It's one or the other.  Those two possibilities are mutually exclusive.

If Sony invests that $5 million dollars in the bank, they will earn $25 million dollars.  If they don't invest that mone in the bank, they will not earn $25 million dollars.  Those two possibilities are again, mutually exclusive.  It doesn't matter what Sony does in conjunction with the Vita.  Whatever else is going on in Sony's as a whole is irrelevant. They spent $5 million dollars on the Vita, and by spending THAT 5 million dollars in the Vita instead of putting it in the bank, they sacrificed 20 million dollars.

To make things even more simple, lets say you ten dollar bills, and there are two magic boxes in front of you.  If you put your money in box A, it will multiply into three dollars.  If you put it in box B it will multiply into two dollars.  Once you use a dollar, you can not use it again or any of the copies made of it.

So, we could agree that putting a dollar in box B is a bad decision right?  It doesn't matter that you could still put 9 other dollars in Box A and also put one in box B.  The point is by putting the dollar in box B you're not getting the maximum value on that dollar.

I think that's as clear as I could make it.  

Having the Vita try and beat the 3DS is cruel and unfair. If Sony were to try and do that, they would tire the thing out.

If the Vita completes it's planned "life cycle" then I would say it's a success. If it were sucking Sony dry of a ton of money, they would discontinue it. If it stayed for it's entire cycle, Sony obviously saw something in it.

That's assuming Sony always makes logical decisions.

It is a success.

Don't make me remind you of Nintendo's Virtual Boy to explain what a true epic failure really is. :P

If we assume the Vita becomes profitable and sells some units at some point, then my "success story" would be a good one.

However If Sony just lets the Vita run it's self dry, I would completely agree with you. 

That could be their new ad campaign.  Not as bad as Virtual Boy... or the Ouya...