The quote with particular interest:
"Major Japanese companies are canceling all projects intended for the Vita and are changing development to the 3DS."
Link to Gamasutra quoting the above
If this rumor turns out to be true, it might be the biggest disaster of a portable console launch since the N-Gage or Virtual Boy. The latest sales from Media Create in Japan say that the Vita only sold 13k systems last week which was less than the PSP which sold 15k and way less than the 3DS which sold over 67k. The 3DS on average is outselling the Playstation Vita on a 5:1 ratio which is really bad news for Sony since the Vita just launched 2 months ago and has failed to gather much excitement or momentum. Now adding to this, if developers cancel future games for the Vita, the system will pretty much be dead in the water.
The only thing that I could see happen would be an extreme price cut by Sony (ala the 3DS) with them losing a ton more money on each system sold than they currently already are, or get some very high profile games on the console fast to generate more sales. I remember the 3DS having a difficult time in the first few months after launch in Japan and people were talking about it, but the sales never were consistently as bad as the Vita has been. It's going to be an interesting couple months to see how Sony responds to this.
5 comments:
I call bull on this one; although this doesn't mean that there aren't any projects canceled on Playstation Vita either. I think this is overblown to make a juicy story for the fact that PS Vita already has fallen below 20,000 five weeks in a row in Japan compared to just three times in the first five/six months for 3DS; and one of those was below 5,000 which was just before the price cut.
But yeah; Vita is in dire straights in Japan right now. Sony will probably do nothing until after the fiscal year is over to do anything about it since they need to see how Vita fares outside Japan and while there are no assurances of it's success, there is less of a chance of failure there too.
If PS Vita falters outside of Japan like it did in Japan; we could be looking at a glorified Sega Gamegear. Still; I doubt that it will be a Virtual Boy or N-Gage; the sales for those two are way too low (VB sold 800,000 worldwide; not even Vita in Japan is performing that badly.) to be put on the same pillar at this point. Again; Game Gear is not out of the question.
Either way; it looks like Nintendo 3DS like the DS before it will be the dominant handheld of this generation. Now if only they can get their software house in order.
could well spell the end of Sony they have invested another billion plus in this obsolete stupid machine,and its a obvious fail
you cannot release a single screened non 3D handheld a year after your direct competition release a machine with those bells and whistles its completely stupid to even think you will survive doing such dumb shit
the graphics hyping has turned out just hype and its clear in real world its slightly more powerful than 3DS it seems more ios designed than gaming designed
it uses shit head ddr mobile ram like smart phones has no high bandwidth and has a lower clocked gpu than 3DS
check out 3rd party games like f1 there graphically identical and 3DS has the added 3D and the menu map info second screen
why on earth as a f1 fan come gamer would i pick the vita version over the 3DS ITS A NOOOOOO BRAINER
the only people who will buy vista are fanzomies
at current retail Sony have estimated a 3 year loss for vita there near bankrupt already !!!!!!!!!!!
with a huge price drop and continued ps3 and tv troubles its the death nail for sony they lost 1.5 billion in the last 3 months there losses are climbing not falling and there selling wares at loss across there whole range due to a weak dollar and euro and pound
apple nintendo and samsung have desimated this aregent out of touch idiot company that has only survived on fanboys for the past 10 years
sony discs and memory sticks flopped mini discs flopped umds flopped ps3 flopped
and sony got left behind in mp3 mp4 harddrives flash online etc sony are a JOKE
Regardless if the rumor is true or not, the fact remains that game developers will support the system with the largest USER BASE. That way they have a bigger chance of making a profit by supporting a system that has a healthy and growing user base. And it so happens that the 3DS has that while the Vita, as of right now, does not.
Considering that a great percentage of Japanese game devs reported loses last year, it makes even more sense to drop support of any systems that are taking a nose-dive into oblivion. This is not to say that the Vita is doomed, since Sony could bite the bullet and give the handheld a hefty price drop to sweeten the deal for those consumers on the fence. But that is unlikely to happen any time soon (and it needs to happen soon!) since Sony has been bleeding badly lately and they cannot afford going into the red with Vita.
@Gregory Weagle - The Vita has not yet matched those Virtual Boy's sales numbers you posted. In Japan, the Vita is still at 566.503 units sold.
And maybe you've been out of the loop, but the 3DS already has great software (both retail and digital games) on it since last year. Try to keep up, bud.
Except my point is based on the fact that Nintendo planned to ship 90 million units of software for 3DS originally; but had to drop it to 40 million units which is less than half that. The software is at this point still selling at a low rate in spite of the improvement. Maybe by the end of 2012 the software will explode; but it hasn't happened yet.
Of course; compared to Vita, 3DS is murdering them in Japan in software sales.
By the way Vita comes next week outside of Japan and getting over 800,000 units worldwide for it to surpass VB is going to be easy. It's first week in Japan only was over 300,000 units anyway. So yeah; I stand by what I said.
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