The new CEO of Sony has plenty on his plate these days. He recently announced plans to cut 10,000 jobs. He has the mighty task of reviving Sony's once-powerful brand name. And he's doing all of this as angry investors and skeptical analysts watch critically from the sidelines.
Now he has another problem to add to the pile: The PS Vita is not moving. And that's an especially notable dilemma, since Hirai has already stated that he's looking for the company's gaming division to help shoulder a big part of the load in the company's turnaround.
In Japan, Vita hardware sales hit a record low last week, selling just 8,250 units. In the U.S. -- where the base Vita sells for $250, and the 3G version sells for $300 -- sales appear to have declined to between 205,000 and 215,000 last month, although precise figures are not available.
If that sounds familiar, it's because it's following the same trend as the 3DS did in its terrible debut in the U.S. While American gamers basically ignored the system due to its high price and lack of must have games, Japanese sales plunged even further.
The ultimate decision to cut the price just a few months after launch was a life preserver for the 3DS, which ended up selling more hardware units in its first year than the DS.
The 20 percent worldwide price cut was only part of the battle, of course. Nintendo's solid holiday lineup of games had arguably a bigger impact -- but that's ultimately a chicken/egg argument. Would the software have convinced people to buy the games if the hardware had stayed at its original $250 price level (notably, the same price as the base Vita)? Or did the price cut make them more willing to pull out their wallet. It's a moot point, either way.
While a price cut seems logical to consumers at this point, it's a little more complicated for Sony. Kaz Hirai is still largely known as a PlayStation guy – and a price cut just two months after the system's U.S. launch would be viewed as a failure of that division. (Just look at the heat Nintendo president Satoru Iwata took when Nintendo slashed the 3DS's price.)
Having that public stumble less than a month into the job wouldn't help Hirai -- and it wouldn't help Sony. That makes it a little less likely that we'll see an immediate official price cut for the Vita. Add in Sony's long history of putting off price cuts, even when sales are sub-optimal, and it's an even bigger longshot.
I wouldn't rule it out entirely, though.
Lowering the system's price during E3 might raise fewer eyebrows, but I suspect it will be a bit longer before Sony pulls the trigger.
Nintendo's decision to reduce the 3DS was unusual not only because of its suddenness, but because it came at a time when there were still no notable games for the system on shelves -- or imminent.
The Vita has a much stronger launch lineup than Nintendo did, but the flow of new games has become a trickle filled with ports and multiplatform titles. At E3, everyone expects Sony to bang the Vita drum loudly, but the odds of a single title (or multiple ones) rallying hardware sales to an acceptable point are slim.
A holiday price cut, however, is something that could both raise sales and allow Sony to save face. It would come close to the system's one-year mark -- an acceptable time to lower prices. It would come as the next round of premium Vita games hits the market. And it would come at a time when consumers are more willing to pull out their wallet.
The only question is: If it does come then, will it be in time to grab people's attention? After all, as the end of the year draws near, the Vita's going to have a lot more competition -- with both the Wii-U and next iPhone likely lobbying hard for people's gadget dollars.
The latest news of opening the platform for external development is interesting. It may sell a few more units and introduce some interesting games to the platform. Please Sony, don't make the same mistakes as Microsoft; have some sort of meaningful garbage filters or quality control in place.
I don't know. Someone did a teardown (iSuppli?) a little while back and estimated the BOM for the Vita was around $160ish. Given all the likely distribution costs and such I can't imagine there's a lot of room for Sony to play with at this point in terms of price. I don't even know if they could get it down to $199 without taking a hit per unit.
I think the bigger issue is that even with a drop in price there still isn't much to play on it. Personally I'm really looking forward to Gravity Rush, but vita needs more than one killer app to move units.
I keep checking the Vita marketplace for any new games worth playing and keep coming up empty. I've purchased two games for the Vita but find myself playing PS Minis games more often. It's possible that if Sony correctly launches Playstation Suite on the Vita it could save the system, opening it up to smaller more nimble developers. At this point with the current system price and current list of games I can barely justify even having one.
If you're coming up empty, you aren't looking very hard. There's good games on there across a bunch of different genres. At the very least, you should try Mutant Blobs Attack and Motorstorm RC. One is $8, the other is free, and both are worth playing.
I have about 15 Vita games on my system (Across multiple genres, RPG, Side scrollers, Katamari games, Golf, Adventure, Shooters) and about 20 PSP ones (Mostly RPGs.) I have a couple of Minis, but aside from Mecho Wars (which I've already finished) and 1000 Tiny Claws (which is fantastic) I'm finding them underwhelming.
As always, it's about the software. I don't know why hardware manufacturers insist on learning this lesson the hard way every time. If you don't have games people want to play, you're not going to move units.
Sony should have delayed the launch until they had more amazing games for the thing.
The only thing I play on my vita are PSP games. I've even thought about importing Japan only vita games, but there isn't much to choose from there either.
The thing is... They learned that lesson this time, and had a stronger catalog at launch and in launch window than any prior system. It's just never quite enough for people. Too many people going onto online forums and saying that there's nothing good on it colors people's perceptions and they don't ever bother going to research it themselves and come up with their own conclusions.
I have tons of PSP games loaded, but I hardly touch them anymore. I go straight from the Daily tournaments on Hotshots Golf to motorstorm rc, Sumioni, mutant blobs attack, or Disgaea 3 and never quite drift over to finishing Ys Seven on the PSP side.
I think its all about the form factor, as it is, the hand held gaming market is kind of dying, its become redundant. The game boy came of age when people had almost zero options on the go, you had a pager, and if lucky a cellphone. Now its wifi/ipod/ipad/iphone/video on demand/internet/texting/music/gaming whatever you want, its a saturation of stuff to do on simple and very useful devices, the only big market left are very young children who due to their lack of fundage remain in this old information/entertainment desert when they leave home. Its just very hard to justify carrying around a vita, let alone buying one at any price, when you drop a deuce you just have enough time for a casual game, not some vita game, so it just doesn't really have a place anymore. The price is the least of its problems. People aren't desperate for entertainment anymore, they can wait to get home to play their ps3 or whatever and do it right.
I don't think a price cut is what's needed. I think $200-$300 is a fine price for a quality hand-held device. Heck, compare that with an $850 iPhone, and those have no trouble selling. What happened to all that "smartphones are the next big thing in mobile gaming?" At more than double the price, the price of the unit isn't the issue at all.
The issue is game selection and user friendliness. Even if you handed me a PS Vita for free right now, I would just leave it on the shelf: there isn't a SINGLE game I want to buy for it. And even if there was a game I wanted, I'd have to buy expensive memory cards, be locked in to crazy anti-piracy schemes, probably have to spend hours updating the firmware, or put up with so much crap it wouldn't be worth my time to even open the damn box.
The lack of game selection has a fairly obvious fix: Sony needs to invest far more heavily in internal game development. They need to establish some strong, unique IP in a multitude of different genres. Shooters, Action games, RPGs, Strategy games; they need to reach a broad and mature audience with deep, compelling game experiences, the kinds of games we don't see on mobile phones.
Sony also needs to adopt a radical new strategy: they need to humble themselves. Humility is increasingly important in the game world. Hubris is becoming less and less tolerated among gamers. When a company like Sony imposes restrictions, DRM-related or not, customers are going to turn away. Selling a device with no internal memory and charging outrageous prices per gig is simply unacceptable. Limiting functionality to prevent piracy or second-hand sales is simply intolerable.
If Sony wants me to trust them to provide a quality gaming experience and buy their console, they have to take the first step and trust me to be a legitimate and loyal customer.
Simon, the iPhone doesn't cost $850. Not to the end consumer. You can get an iPhone 4s no less for $199. Ah yes that's with a mobile phone contract but you do get a fast 3G plus a phone. Don't want a contract? Get the iPod touch for $199.
You also get a at better music and video player that is more portable.
Oh and does the $250 ps vita include the necessary ps vita memory card to save and in some cases even play games? I count that card as another mistake. They should include
One 4 higher free if not at least two.
Ricardo: Don't give me the Contract argument. You're paying $200 + a minimum of $1200 if you buy a phone on contract. That's a choice between $500-850 up front or $1400 paid in installments for an iPhone.
The $250 model doesn't include a card, but one can be had for a mere $20, so the total price is only $270. The $300 model includes an 8 gig card along with the wireless internet features, contract free and for a very cheap price. (I've never used more than 100 megabytes of data on my Vita dataplan in a month, so it's pointless to get more than the $15 plan.)
The card is mainly just an economical way to allow the user to select their amount of storage rather than paying an extra $100 to switch from 16 to 32 gigs like you do with Apple products. It's only $40 extra to pick up a 32 gig card vs. a 16 gig card on the Vita.
As for the iPod, you're paying nearly as much for the iPod as the Vita, and you're getting a system that is far inferior gaming, and only excels in Audio. It has only 1 core vs. 4, and the GPU is similar, but of a prior generation and half as powerful at best, and you're locked into one storage size and have to buy a whole new one if you ever want more storage. The Vita is also far more durable than an iPod... Those glass and aluminum apple products tend to shatter on impact.
Simon:
If you're looking on a brand new console for trying to play the same old game series and same old IPs and Genres you're used to, you're doing the new console launch thing wrong. New console launches are a time to discover new IPs, to try out genres that you've never played before or that you haven't played in ages. I rediscovered the Golf game genre on the Vita after having not played a computer golf game since 1998. I found Mutant Blobs Attack and Rayman Origins, both game series that I had never gotten into previously, but both of which were excellent games. Only this week did a game in my chosen genre come out, Disgaea 3, but it doesn't matter because I've been discovering all kinds of other things to play until then.
The firmware does not take hours to update. I think it might take 10 or 15 minutes to download, and just a minute or two to install. I've already addressed the memory cards above.
Lets run down your genre list here.
Shooters. Super Stardust Delta is a twin stick shooter, and quite good.
Uncharted is a third person shooter, also quite good.
Unit 13 is a decent third person shooter, though I'm not into military shooters myself.
Resistance: Burning Skies is a first person shooter and should be out next month.
Action games.
Uncharted may qualify for this as well
Sumioni is an OK action game, sidescrolling.
Mutant Blobs Attack is a fantastic action side scroller
There's Dynasty Warriors Next for a hack and slash action game
Shinobido 2 is another decent action game, I haven't played it myself though.
Strategy games? Those normally take quite awhile to produce, but there is one on the system already. Disgaea 3: Absense of Detention. It's more of a strategy RPG though, bringing me to...
RPGs. These are by far the genre that takes longest to bring over to a new console. Even the 3DS only has a couple at this point. You normally expect RPGs to come out for a console 2 years into a console's lifecycle. Disgaea 3 is already out, Persona 4 should be out later this year or early next year, There's an Atelier game in the works as well. I'm sure the Vita will be a monster system for RPGs, just like its predecessor. The PSP was among the top 2 RPG systems of the 2005-current generation, only rivaled by the DS. You can still get a massive number of RPGs for the PSP on your Vita as well, and this should be enough to hold you over.
Yup a fair total cost of ownership comparison leaves the vita looking pretty poor. 249-299+16gb memory card 50 bucks, each game 30-50, and you are talking ~500+ for just portable gaming, single task tool. A phone justifies itself as a multiple use tool integrated in your life, from gps to web to gaming, it has everything and can be justified in so many ways, the vita is just totally frivolous, many folks would rather invest that in say a bigger tv or something rather than some vita they probably will rarely play.
Do you want devices that do one thing very well, or something that does everything in a mediocre fashion? A smartphone is a mediocre phone, a mediocre gps, a mediocre music player, a mediocre game player and a mediocre web browser.
The Vita is a fantastic game system, and still manages to do several of the other tasks that a phone can do in a similar mediocre fashion.
Keith Thomson,Smartphones aren't doing everything in a mediocre way. Running gps/web and the rest work fine on a smartphone, how much control do you need for angry birds while you drop a deuce? Its the perfect amount of functionality for its purpose.On the other hand they are all compromises, small screen makes that so, and the vita is not exempt, so the question could be flipped, why spend so much to play mediocre console games when you can just wait till you get home?;) smartphone functionality fits the rest of the day better.
Vita does portability in a mediocre way, it barely fits in a purse;)
The price isn't the issue, if you eventualy give it for free, then it'll sell, naturaly, but it's not where the problem is. The problem is that Sony can't change their buisness model and is completely ignoring the huge smartphone market.
Nintendo has alot of franchises, they can keep thier hardware close to them because they can just make new, big games for it. Sony can't. They should've made the platform open, like Andriod and iOS, instead of introducing more propertiary formats and hardware and their awful networks nobody wants to be a part of. Let people play with your device. Developers have alternatives now, nobody wants to deal with this ancient buisness model anymore, and they don't have to. What are they afraid of, pirates? If somebody wants to take full control over your device, they will. Either Sony figures this out or they'll have to start giving their system away for free and they could've been selling it for much more than they're now.
This is my whole experience with Sony, with their TVs it's not a big issue, it's just a TV. But buy an MP3 player from them and you have to use their terrible software to convert files. WHY, why does a player for 5$ play any files but a Sony product requires me to sit there for an hour and use library software i don't want to use. In the age of open platforms Sony is still stuck in their propertiary mindset.
It is annoying for sure. I got a Sony home theater system, and I have no complaints about how it sounds, looks or functions, but they've hard wired the speakers with properitary cables.
Now, it wouldn't really be that big of a deal, except that the cables are ALL too short! So I've ended up having to splice extensions into them, and I'm basically set up now to either replace the speakers or receiver. Seriously Sony, what was the point of that?
It's basically a perfect example of Sony's whole business. They feel that they can tell the consumer how a product must be used, instead of actually listening to how users want to use the product. I'm sure Sony has some perfect set up where all the cables are just the right length, so they feel that it's the user's problem if they want to set up the system any other way. It's also your problem if you think their library software sucks or their memory cards are too expensive. Maybe this worked in the past, but people just have too many options now, they're not going to put up with this nonsense any more, or they'll do what I've done and grab a pair of wire cutters and make the product work the way it should.
@Alex, yet the product that is all about controlling how you use it is possibly the most popular product out right now. People don't care about being told how to do it, actually they prefer it, they just want something that does it for them.
May also be a cultural thing, in japan for some reason they are sticking with their flip phones way more than other countries. http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/23/comscore-japan-an-early-mover-in-mobile- trails- the-u-s-others-in-smartphones/ I remember a recent geekbeat with cali lewis where she was in japan, one of her observations was that she saw way more flip phones there still... this might account for sonys lack of vision...
Awesome idea, right now, Nintendo is taking a loss on every 3DS sold at $169.99 and this at a point, when the 3DS is selling like hotcakes and it's at least possible that high production numbers help lower the costs.
I think it's a safe bet to say every Vita costs Sony more then every 3DS costs Nintendo, so with every console, sold at a price in a competitive range to the 3DS, they would loose even more money then Nintendo (traditionally Sony is already selling each console at a loss during the first years).
Additionally Sony isn't a big 1st party publisher any more, so they rely on 3rd party royalties to make their money, this means for Sony to make up the losses and gain a profit the Vita has to sell more 3rd party games, then Nintendo has to sell 1st party titles.
So, what you are suggesting is that Sony should cut the price of a product, already eating up money with every sold console with the aim to sell more consoles and to loose more money, when there is no software in sight, that has the slightest possibility to sell at least as good as Nintendo's 1st party titles?
Good luck convincing anybody to do so, especially when you are a company, that has debts higher then it has assets.
Hmm. Not a big 1st party publisher *anymore*? I'm pretty sure they're a bigger first party publisher than they've ever been. Not only have they been publishing more than ever, but they've been buying up companies like Media Molecule, Suckerpunch, and Naughty Dog over the last few years.
Look at the PS1 and even more at the PS2 days and look how many games they released every month for years and compare that to the number of titles they are releasing today on the PS3.
Currently Amazon germany lists 26 availabe Vita games, but only 7 of them are from Sony.
Sony released a lot more titles under their own brand on previous platforms but they also had a lot more losers. The same can be said for Nintendo. First party tend to get more and more focused on two areas: AAA titles and specialty titles for add-ons like Move. Once you have strong third party support it's a waste to try to cover all of the bases by yourself. Consider that Microsoft is often weakest in first party offerings but often strongest in overall platform.
The size of the company and the number of games released has less to do with each other than you might think. The games they're releasing now are much bigger and more labor intensive than the ones they did previously. Also, you're confusing First party vs. Third party games that they are publishing. They own many more of the studios, whereas before they just published games made by studios they didn't own, but where they only owned the IP.
@ Sean
Nintendo itself says they are taking a loss on each 3DS sold and I don't see why they should be inaccurate about this.
The assumed manufacturing costs are not the costs of a product. First of all, these costs always lack shipping and distribution (and in this case even manufacturing, these are material costs alone), but more, because the RRP of the 3DS is not, what the retailer pays for the console. He gets it much cheaper, because he has to make a profit selling the console, otherwise he isn't interesting in selling it.
@ Keith
I never correlated the size of a company and the number of games a company is publishing. I said that Sony developed and released more titles during the PS1 and PS2 days then they are releasing now for the PS3.
I am not confusing 1st and 3rd party, because a game using an IP owned by Sony and developed by studio hired by Sony that is published by Sony is a 1st party game and a game based on an IP owned by Sony developed by a studio owned by Sony and published by Sony is also a 1st party game.
Sony is more depending on the licence fees 3rd party publishers have to pay then in the previous generation, because they have fewer 1st party titles, that can make up the loss they are still taking with each sold PS3.
Your argument, that the games are "much bigger and more labor intensive than the ones they did previously", sounds kind of strange for several reasons, first I would ask, are they bigger? I don't think you need more time to finish an Uncharted game then you need to finish a God of War title. At which Level is GT5 bigger then GT4?
The games are more "labor intensive", this may be right, because development costs rose in this generation, but the general output of games by other companies didn't shrunk like Sony's output did. EA, Activision, Capcom, Ubisoft are releasing as many games, as they did in previous generations.
I think Sony is stuck in an old paradigm. Consumer electronics aren't just about tech heads and geeks anymore. And that's kind of the only market something like the Vita serves. You've got the Kindle, and iPad reaching everyone from babies to grandmas. So I think Sony needs to make Playstation appeal to those kinds of people, as much as it appeals to hardcore gamers.
Sony is losing money on every Vita sold. The 3DS at it's original price was selling for a profit. Only after the price was Nintendo taking a hit on the hardware. Which according to their math will start making a profit sometime this year. Nintendo decided to take a lot of damage at once when the did the panic price cut. Sony seems to unwilling to do that since they already use the 10 plan statement. So if they won't cut the price they need to get some handheld system sellers for the Vita. The problem is Sony don't know how to make those types of games. All of their titles are console games, and when put on a handheld. Feel like a water down version of a console game. Nintendo games translate to handhelds, and they have established handheld system sellers. So for Sony just getting more games is not going to help. The need the right kind of games. That's why in Japan losing Monster Hunter was just a major event. Nintendo now has control at least on a portable device. 3 of the 4 biggest games in Japan 2D Mario, Pokemon, and Monster Hunter.
Yeah. Price drop or not, none of the games on the horizon are system sellers. I'd love to check out Gravity Rush, Dragon's Crown, and a few others then they release. Other than that, there is hardly anything noteworthy in the cesspool of rehashes and remakes.
I'd say that Call of Duty coming out this fall will probably be a system seller. Resistance: Burning Skies is likely to give them a decent nudge as well.
Though, I'm definitely more interested in Gravity Rush myself.
And now that Playstation Suite is out and is very similar to XNA, maybe someone can convince Robert Boyd to bring some of his games over...
"IGN: So you're going to be profitable with each Vita sold?
Yoshida: We haven't completed the hardware development. It's like 98-percent done in terms of hardware, and on the system software side and network code, we have a few more months to work on that. We don't have the final-final answer to that question, but the way we are projecting it seems like we're going to do pretty well. "
At this time not even the hardware was finalised, so I think it was Sony's target then to achieve profibilaty, but to see if they really did, we would need something more recent then June 2011.
We just have seen, how Sony corrects a projected loss of 220 billion Yen to a loss of 520 billion Yen within just 2 months.
Good games come first. When Squaresoft jumped Nintendo's ship and put FF7 on playstation, it took a lot of gamers with it. Would there be an Xbox 360 if it wasn't for Halo? Dunno, but it helped.
memory cards are prohibitively expensive, otherwise the handheld itself should see a cut so that a bundle with one game and a decent sized memory card (at least 8GB) can be had for 250 bucks.
Yea but its an on going cost, how many apps and games can you buy for an iphone for the same money you'll spend on vita games and cards alone?
It becomes prohibitive because unlike a smart phone, there is no practical function justifying the expense. Buy a few games and memory cards and you'll hit 500 dollars fast, at that point people just would rather sink that into something else, into a laptop/hdtv/tablet fund or whatever, people budget for so many other toys now, this one just is hard to justify
Remember, With the iPhone, you're either going to pay $500+ for it, or you're going to be paying an extra $50 a month or more in contract costs and still paying around $200 for the phone. For the cost of that monthly payment, you could get a full featured, large game every month that will last you 10-15 hours before you ever repeat content, and that content is of a much higher quality. Compare that to most iPhone games where their central mechanism is massive repetition of poor quality, limited content.
Yes but as I've said, people need and can easily justify the phone payment, it encompasses so many functionalities in different aspects of peoples lives, all in the palm of their hand, fitting in their pocket.
Vita cost no matter if it is less than a smartphone even slightly is entirely a luxury.
People really don't care if a 50 dollar portable game lasts 15 hours, how many hours do people play angrybirds? How much does that cost?;) As I said, people don't really care that much about repetition when they only whip out the gaming when they are dropping a deuce.
The 3DS wasn't rescued by a price cut, they turned around when they finally got games out there that people actually wanted to buy. The Mario and Zelda games in the US, and Monster Hunter in Japan. The Vita will probably similarly turn around when we get both of the two big upcoming FPS games out for it. Call of Duty and Resistance: Burning Skies.
I think they should drop the price in Feb or March of next year, after they get the sales bump from Call of Duty.
Not true for me. There were no games that were ever going to get me to pay $250 for a 3DS. I got mine a few weeks ago at $145, which by no small coincidence is very close to the price I paid for the original DS at launch.
I've yet to buy a Wii despite a fair number of games I'd like to play. I just don't want them enough to overcome the Wii being a hopped up GameCube with motion controllers I don't want to use. Nearly all of the Wii games I desire could have been done on the GameCube. I'll think about a Wii when it get down to $100 or when the backward compatible Wii U is at the right price.
I bought a lot of platforms at launch over the last thirty years. I'm done with that. I have far too many existing games waiting to be played to be enticed by a high priced new platform. I can wait.
Of course, that means that you're probably not going to be a Vita owner for some time, it took 5-6 years for the PSP price to drop down below $150. I have bought game systems in the same manner you have, but only in cases where there was very, very little available for that system that I wanted. The Gamecube, Dreamcast, and Xbox were 3 systems that I waited on until the price dropped to $150 because they each had less than 6 games that I wanted.
Except for the DS, there hasn't been a single system where I've been disappointed by buying it in the first year it was released. There has always been enough on them to make it worth the purchase. The DS was awful though, because before any games came out that I wanted, they released an even smaller model. At least the BC let me play through a dozen or so GBA games I still had.
I think the SDK program or otherwise known as the PlayStation Suite will help bridge the gap and create casual game experiences for the casual gamer. That said the PlayStation Vita is expensive and nobody except the people who research and follow the PlayStation company know about it. Change your advertising style Sony to let people know what it can actually do. Not the Cross Play feature that fanboys care about. Show several games and apps(LiveTweet especially) in the commercials. People got to realize that it takes longer to develop good games for the Vita than the IPod/IPad. Yeah if you really want to play Angry Birds then play it on your phone not on the Vita. I think that they're not going to price drop the Vita until sometime next year because they are making a profit right now. I think it costs Sony $160 to make the Vita so Sony is making a $90-$120 profit currently.
Sony isn't necessarily the ones getting that profit though, even if that's an accurate tally of the component and construction costs. A large chunk of it will go to the retail store you buy it from.
A price cut would be so depressing. More people would be wondering why they're mostly playing PSP games, why you can't play PS1 games, and why the browser sucks at refreshing. I see that people are enjoying Vita games. Yay.
I own a Vita. I enjoy it but I can't really convince anyone else to buy any of the available games. They're waiting for the must buys. The good news is that they will buy one at the current price. At least have a game and soak up all the people who are willing to pay for it first.
A price cut? No. They shouldn't of even launched the product. It was dead even before it launched. They should shut the whole thing down and restructure their mobile games effort around the Android platform. Why would any developer give a damn about the Vita platform? Exactly, since they don't. Sony mobile phones is already in a whole world of pain and its confusing to have multiple branding messages out there.
I'm not sure why people want Vita to be Android based. I'm already had my Android phone and don't think I really need another Android device just for better gaming experience. I buy my mobile phone for phone and social contact. I will buy Vita and 3DS for playing games. That's the reasons why phone and dedicate gaming machine exist. Why developer give a damn about Vita platform? I don't know, but I don't think that is the real problem. Because, 3DS also have their own platform and still sell just fine. As everyone said, its platform or price are not the problem here, the real problem Sony need to fix and fast is their lack of killing apps. Throw Monster Hunter, Call of Duty or Metal Gears to the system and people will stop complaining about platform, memory, price or whatsoever.
some people will buy separate portable gaming and phone products. the vast majority will not. T K is absolutely right. add smartphone functionality or prepare to die.
Why do you like Android OS on the Vita? The Vita is getting more and more like a smartphone everyday. They added Skype to it this week and I'm sure the PlayStation Suite will allow more apps to be developed by anybody that knows c#. No this isn't for everybody, but for people who want to play real games on the go the Vita's for you.
The Vita is a bargain at $250-300, I would have paid more honestly. I would happily but a rev2 product with haptic feedback. Those who say there aren't games for it aren't looking hard enough. I don't think a portable's success hinges on a spectacular launch anyways. I'm totally satisfied with my launch titles and I look forward with optimism for more.
The 3DS is something you buy to shut your kids up, the cheaper the better. The Vita is solid and Sony would be wise to wait out the whiners and just continue to deliver the goods.
I agree with you Will. I am happy with my Vita also. You know that with any new console launch there is going to be some delay in games so all the whining that people do needs to stop. I agree also the 3DS is something for kids and the Vita is for teens and adults who want to play a console quality game while they are on the road or waiting in line for a cup of coffee. Some people say that why do you need a Vita when you got a PS3 because the fact is that we want a console quality experience on the go. It's not for everybody but for lots of people it is for them.
there was an article recently about how by the year 2014 smartphones will rival the Xbox 360 in terms of graphics. If this is true then theres gotta be some concerns for anyone buying a Vita Today in terms of longevity. Knowing smartphones though, they will probably screw up the controls, making even the simplest platformers a nightmare to play.
Obviously I don't have time to read all 68 comments, but I've really had it with this PS Vita BS. First of all, let's all agree that it's a wonderful piece of equipment, and it needs more game. Ok, now that's out of the way.
Here's my problem with the whole price drop thing:
1- Japan's sales figures... all I can say to that is the japanese market makes less and less sense. It's just a terrible market to be in now (I won't use it as an excuse, though).
2- Does anyone have hard data on how many people BADLY want a Vita but are just waiting for a price drop, and are very confident it'll happen because Nintendo kinda created a precedent now?
3- The PS Vita, with those specs, is $249. How much is your iPhone, iPad? Every year, too. Who's asking for a price drop on those? Don't they clearly deserve one? I have a huge problem with people using a different set of rules for Apple and Sony.
So the bottomline, I also feel bad for Kaz Hirai, because there's very little that makes sense here.
I completely agree with you on those points. Japan's sales figures are slow for the Vita. Nintendo did create a precedent by dropping the price of the 3DS before the Vita ever came out. The specs for the Vita are great and yet everybody seems to think it needs a price drop. When anybody says handheld they automatically think of younger kids who play the 3DS I think so the Vita is trying to change that and is having a hard time doing that. When you first get a Vita, it comes with a page and a half of instructions so clearly in Sonys mind this isn't for kids. Plus Sony doesn't know to advertise the Vita correctly. They should show many games and apps on the Vita, that gets some casual gamers interested as well as keeping with their core audience.
Instead of cutting the price, they should raise it by $50 and turn the Vita into a phone. It would be one of the cheaper phones out there, with the BEST games. Everyone with a current generation console who needs a new phone would have to get one.
I have about 15 Vita games on my system (Across multiple genres, RPG, Side scrollers, Katamari games, Golf, Adventure, Shooters) and about 20 PSP ones (Mostly RPGs.) I have a couple of Minis, but aside from Mecho Wars (which I've already finished) and 1000 Tiny Claws (which is fantastic) I'm finding them underwhelming.
Sony should have delayed the launch until they had more amazing games for the thing.
I have tons of PSP games loaded, but I hardly touch them anymore. I go straight from the Daily tournaments on Hotshots Golf to motorstorm rc, Sumioni, mutant blobs attack, or Disgaea 3 and never quite drift over to finishing Ys Seven on the PSP side.
The issue is game selection and user friendliness. Even if you handed me a PS Vita for free right now, I would just leave it on the shelf: there isn't a SINGLE game I want to buy for it. And even if there was a game I wanted, I'd have to buy expensive memory cards, be locked in to crazy anti-piracy schemes, probably have to spend hours updating the firmware, or put up with so much crap it wouldn't be worth my time to even open the damn box.
The lack of game selection has a fairly obvious fix: Sony needs to invest far more heavily in internal game development. They need to establish some strong, unique IP in a multitude of different genres. Shooters, Action games, RPGs, Strategy games; they need to reach a broad and mature audience with deep, compelling game experiences, the kinds of games we don't see on mobile phones.
Sony also needs to adopt a radical new strategy: they need to humble themselves. Humility is increasingly important in the game world. Hubris is becoming less and less tolerated among gamers. When a company like Sony imposes restrictions, DRM-related or not, customers are going to turn away. Selling a device with no internal memory and charging outrageous prices per gig is simply unacceptable. Limiting functionality to prevent piracy or second-hand sales is simply intolerable.
If Sony wants me to trust them to provide a quality gaming experience and buy their console, they have to take the first step and trust me to be a legitimate and loyal customer.
You also get a at better music and video player that is more portable.
Oh and does the $250 ps vita include the necessary ps vita memory card to save and in some cases even play games? I count that card as another mistake. They should include
One 4 higher free if not at least two.
The $250 model doesn't include a card, but one can be had for a mere $20, so the total price is only $270. The $300 model includes an 8 gig card along with the wireless internet features, contract free and for a very cheap price. (I've never used more than 100 megabytes of data on my Vita dataplan in a month, so it's pointless to get more than the $15 plan.)
The card is mainly just an economical way to allow the user to select their amount of storage rather than paying an extra $100 to switch from 16 to 32 gigs like you do with Apple products. It's only $40 extra to pick up a 32 gig card vs. a 16 gig card on the Vita.
As for the iPod, you're paying nearly as much for the iPod as the Vita, and you're getting a system that is far inferior gaming, and only excels in Audio. It has only 1 core vs. 4, and the GPU is similar, but of a prior generation and half as powerful at best, and you're locked into one storage size and have to buy a whole new one if you ever want more storage. The Vita is also far more durable than an iPod... Those glass and aluminum apple products tend to shatter on impact.
If you're looking on a brand new console for trying to play the same old game series and same old IPs and Genres you're used to, you're doing the new console launch thing wrong. New console launches are a time to discover new IPs, to try out genres that you've never played before or that you haven't played in ages. I rediscovered the Golf game genre on the Vita after having not played a computer golf game since 1998. I found Mutant Blobs Attack and Rayman Origins, both game series that I had never gotten into previously, but both of which were excellent games. Only this week did a game in my chosen genre come out, Disgaea 3, but it doesn't matter because I've been discovering all kinds of other things to play until then.
The firmware does not take hours to update. I think it might take 10 or 15 minutes to download, and just a minute or two to install. I've already addressed the memory cards above.
Lets run down your genre list here.
Shooters. Super Stardust Delta is a twin stick shooter, and quite good.
Uncharted is a third person shooter, also quite good.
Unit 13 is a decent third person shooter, though I'm not into military shooters myself.
Resistance: Burning Skies is a first person shooter and should be out next month.
Action games.
Uncharted may qualify for this as well
Sumioni is an OK action game, sidescrolling.
Mutant Blobs Attack is a fantastic action side scroller
There's Dynasty Warriors Next for a hack and slash action game
Shinobido 2 is another decent action game, I haven't played it myself though.
Strategy games? Those normally take quite awhile to produce, but there is one on the system already. Disgaea 3: Absense of Detention. It's more of a strategy RPG though, bringing me to...
RPGs. These are by far the genre that takes longest to bring over to a new console. Even the 3DS only has a couple at this point. You normally expect RPGs to come out for a console 2 years into a console's lifecycle. Disgaea 3 is already out, Persona 4 should be out later this year or early next year, There's an Atelier game in the works as well. I'm sure the Vita will be a monster system for RPGs, just like its predecessor. The PSP was among the top 2 RPG systems of the 2005-current generation, only rivaled by the DS. You can still get a massive number of RPGs for the PSP on your Vita as well, and this should be enough to hold you over.
Do you want devices that do one thing very well, or something that does everything in a mediocre fashion? A smartphone is a mediocre phone, a mediocre gps, a mediocre music player, a mediocre game player and a mediocre web browser.
The Vita is a fantastic game system, and still manages to do several of the other tasks that a phone can do in a similar mediocre fashion.
Vita does portability in a mediocre way, it barely fits in a purse;)
Nintendo has alot of franchises, they can keep thier hardware close to them because they can just make new, big games for it. Sony can't. They should've made the platform open, like Andriod and iOS, instead of introducing more propertiary formats and hardware and their awful networks nobody wants to be a part of. Let people play with your device. Developers have alternatives now, nobody wants to deal with this ancient buisness model anymore, and they don't have to. What are they afraid of, pirates? If somebody wants to take full control over your device, they will. Either Sony figures this out or they'll have to start giving their system away for free and they could've been selling it for much more than they're now.
This is my whole experience with Sony, with their TVs it's not a big issue, it's just a TV. But buy an MP3 player from them and you have to use their terrible software to convert files. WHY, why does a player for 5$ play any files but a Sony product requires me to sit there for an hour and use library software i don't want to use. In the age of open platforms Sony is still stuck in their propertiary mindset.
Now, it wouldn't really be that big of a deal, except that the cables are ALL too short! So I've ended up having to splice extensions into them, and I'm basically set up now to either replace the speakers or receiver. Seriously Sony, what was the point of that?
It's basically a perfect example of Sony's whole business. They feel that they can tell the consumer how a product must be used, instead of actually listening to how users want to use the product. I'm sure Sony has some perfect set up where all the cables are just the right length, so they feel that it's the user's problem if they want to set up the system any other way. It's also your problem if you think their library software sucks or their memory cards are too expensive. Maybe this worked in the past, but people just have too many options now, they're not going to put up with this nonsense any more, or they'll do what I've done and grab a pair of wire cutters and make the product work the way it should.
the-u-s-others-in-smartphones/ I remember a recent geekbeat with cali lewis where she was in japan, one of her observations was that she saw way more flip phones there still... this might account for sonys lack of vision...
I think it's a safe bet to say every Vita costs Sony more then every 3DS costs Nintendo, so with every console, sold at a price in a competitive range to the 3DS, they would loose even more money then Nintendo (traditionally Sony is already selling each console at a loss during the first years).
Additionally Sony isn't a big 1st party publisher any more, so they rely on 3rd party royalties to make their money, this means for Sony to make up the losses and gain a profit the Vita has to sell more 3rd party games, then Nintendo has to sell 1st party titles.
So, what you are suggesting is that Sony should cut the price of a product, already eating up money with every sold console with the aim to sell more consoles and to loose more money, when there is no software in sight, that has the slightest possibility to sell at least as good as Nintendo's 1st party titles?
Good luck convincing anybody to do so, especially when you are a company, that has debts higher then it has assets.
Look at the PS1 and even more at the PS2 days and look how many games they released every month for years and compare that to the number of titles they are releasing today on the PS3.
Currently Amazon germany lists 26 availabe Vita games, but only 7 of them are from Sony.
I don't think Nintendo is taking a loss on the 3DS at $169.
The size of the company and the number of games released has less to do with each other than you might think. The games they're releasing now are much bigger and more labor intensive than the ones they did previously. Also, you're confusing First party vs. Third party games that they are publishing. They own many more of the studios, whereas before they just published games made by studios they didn't own, but where they only owned the IP.
Nintendo itself says they are taking a loss on each 3DS sold and I don't see why they should be inaccurate about this.
The assumed manufacturing costs are not the costs of a product. First of all, these costs always lack shipping and distribution (and in this case even manufacturing, these are material costs alone), but more, because the RRP of the 3DS is not, what the retailer pays for the console. He gets it much cheaper, because he has to make a profit selling the console, otherwise he isn't interesting in selling it.
@ Keith
I never correlated the size of a company and the number of games a company is publishing. I said that Sony developed and released more titles during the PS1 and PS2 days then they are releasing now for the PS3.
I am not confusing 1st and 3rd party, because a game using an IP owned by Sony and developed by studio hired by Sony that is published by Sony is a 1st party game and a game based on an IP owned by Sony developed by a studio owned by Sony and published by Sony is also a 1st party game.
Sony is more depending on the licence fees 3rd party publishers have to pay then in the previous generation, because they have fewer 1st party titles, that can make up the loss they are still taking with each sold PS3.
Your argument, that the games are "much bigger and more labor intensive than the ones they did previously", sounds kind of strange for several reasons, first I would ask, are they bigger? I don't think you need more time to finish an Uncharted game then you need to finish a God of War title. At which Level is GT5 bigger then GT4?
The games are more "labor intensive", this may be right, because development costs rose in this generation, but the general output of games by other companies didn't shrunk like Sony's output did. EA, Activision, Capcom, Ubisoft are releasing as many games, as they did in previous generations.
Though, I'm definitely more interested in Gravity Rush myself.
And now that Playstation Suite is out and is very similar to XNA, maybe someone can convince Robert Boyd to bring some of his games over...
http://ie.psp.ign.com/articles/117/1177042p1.html
"IGN: So you're going to be profitable with each Vita sold?
Yoshida: We haven't completed the hardware development. It's like 98-percent done in terms of hardware, and on the system software side and network code, we have a few more months to work on that. We don't have the final-final answer to that question, but the way we are projecting it seems like we're going to do pretty well. "
At this time not even the hardware was finalised, so I think it was Sony's target then to achieve profibilaty, but to see if they really did, we would need something more recent then June 2011.
We just have seen, how Sony corrects a projected loss of 220 billion Yen to a loss of 520 billion Yen within just 2 months.
If you pay for a month of AT&T at $15, you'll get Super Stardust Delta and an additional month free.
$20 is not prohibitively expensive.
It becomes prohibitive because unlike a smart phone, there is no practical function justifying the expense. Buy a few games and memory cards and you'll hit 500 dollars fast, at that point people just would rather sink that into something else, into a laptop/hdtv/tablet fund or whatever, people budget for so many other toys now, this one just is hard to justify
Remember, With the iPhone, you're either going to pay $500+ for it, or you're going to be paying an extra $50 a month or more in contract costs and still paying around $200 for the phone. For the cost of that monthly payment, you could get a full featured, large game every month that will last you 10-15 hours before you ever repeat content, and that content is of a much higher quality. Compare that to most iPhone games where their central mechanism is massive repetition of poor quality, limited content.
Vita cost no matter if it is less than a smartphone even slightly is entirely a luxury.
People really don't care if a 50 dollar portable game lasts 15 hours, how many hours do people play angrybirds? How much does that cost?;) As I said, people don't really care that much about repetition when they only whip out the gaming when they are dropping a deuce.
The 3DS wasn't rescued by a price cut, they turned around when they finally got games out there that people actually wanted to buy. The Mario and Zelda games in the US, and Monster Hunter in Japan. The Vita will probably similarly turn around when we get both of the two big upcoming FPS games out for it. Call of Duty and Resistance: Burning Skies.
I think they should drop the price in Feb or March of next year, after they get the sales bump from Call of Duty.
I've yet to buy a Wii despite a fair number of games I'd like to play. I just don't want them enough to overcome the Wii being a hopped up GameCube with motion controllers I don't want to use. Nearly all of the Wii games I desire could have been done on the GameCube. I'll think about a Wii when it get down to $100 or when the backward compatible Wii U is at the right price.
I bought a lot of platforms at launch over the last thirty years. I'm done with that. I have far too many existing games waiting to be played to be enticed by a high priced new platform. I can wait.
Of course, that means that you're probably not going to be a Vita owner for some time, it took 5-6 years for the PSP price to drop down below $150. I have bought game systems in the same manner you have, but only in cases where there was very, very little available for that system that I wanted. The Gamecube, Dreamcast, and Xbox were 3 systems that I waited on until the price dropped to $150 because they each had less than 6 games that I wanted.
Except for the DS, there hasn't been a single system where I've been disappointed by buying it in the first year it was released. There has always been enough on them to make it worth the purchase. The DS was awful though, because before any games came out that I wanted, they released an even smaller model. At least the BC let me play through a dozen or so GBA games I still had.
I own a Vita. I enjoy it but I can't really convince anyone else to buy any of the available games. They're waiting for the must buys. The good news is that they will buy one at the current price. At least have a game and soak up all the people who are willing to pay for it first.
The 3DS is something you buy to shut your kids up, the cheaper the better. The Vita is solid and Sony would be wise to wait out the whiners and just continue to deliver the goods.
Here's my problem with the whole price drop thing:
1- Japan's sales figures... all I can say to that is the japanese market makes less and less sense. It's just a terrible market to be in now (I won't use it as an excuse, though).
2- Does anyone have hard data on how many people BADLY want a Vita but are just waiting for a price drop, and are very confident it'll happen because Nintendo kinda created a precedent now?
3- The PS Vita, with those specs, is $249. How much is your iPhone, iPad? Every year, too. Who's asking for a price drop on those? Don't they clearly deserve one? I have a huge problem with people using a different set of rules for Apple and Sony.
So the bottomline, I also feel bad for Kaz Hirai, because there's very little that makes sense here.