Amazon UK: Vita Struggling, Absolutely

Amazon UK's Keta Patel may have had glowing words for Nintendo, but he had a different tune for the Playstation Vita. In his words, the console is 'struggling, absolutely, in terms of the market segment.'

[gigoran]

(gets handed the money under the table)

"Oh yes, Nintendo will do wonders this year and succeed. Sony and their Vita unfortunately didn't GIVE me enough ENCOURAGEMENT to say that they will improve."

Next thing he's gonna tell us is that a console using under par specs but called a next gen system is going to surpass the PS4.

[Yodagamer]

(Looks at games wii u is getting) (looks at vita games this year). The vita is getting mainly ports while the wii u is actually getting quite alot of system sellers this year. What ticks me off about sony is they have this awesome hardware sitting here, yet they won't even get their developers on it and when they do get the games out there they absolutely fail to advertise them. The just are leaving them out there to die.

[vazurahan]

Sony already released exclusives for the Vita. They already did their part from some of their biggest IPs.

Uncharted
Killzone
Little Big Planet
Gravity Rush (New IP)
Freedom Wars (New IP from Sony Japan Studio)
Tearaway (New IP)

Their only pending IP's I'm waiting for are
Infamous
God of War

It's just that, those Sony IPs don't sell like Pokemon for handhelds. There's nothing Sony can do about that.

Their mistake is discouraging multiplaform games from third parties. It should be getting games like GTAV, COD:Ghost, and MGSV.

I mean, why do people expect exclusives from those big third party companies? All of their biggest games are multiplatform. You can't simply expect them to release a AAA exclusive game either to home console or handheld console.

That's too much expectations from them.

[Yep]

No idea why you got disagrees (actually, I do have an idea).

@vazurahan I don't see how expecting PS Vita to actually be profitable for Sony is a high expectation

[Blues Cowboy]

@Yodagamer: you're spot on, and I don't know why you're getting flack for this. I love my Vita, but aside from a tiny handful of big games and some AWESOME cult/JP stuff, it rarely gets used. Sony definitely needs to task more of their big first-party studios with Vita games, which sadly they won't be able to do for a while thanks to the need to concentrate on PS4.

[Yodagamer]

@vazurahan Yes those games are awesome, but I said next year. On psp we had a bunch of new ips and older ones like daxter, god of war, socom, gran turismo, twisted metal, syphon filter, a GOOD resistance and many other games. Heck the psp version of modnation was better than the vita one and how that got past sony is a mystery to me.

[Hicken]

There's a problem ere. beaker brings it up below, but it's worth repeating: why is it that a multiplatform game that releases on Vita at the same time as home consoles is considered a port? And, more importantly, why is that a bad thing? Are people gonna treat Watch Dogs on Wii U worse because it's a port? PS4 is probably the lead platform(as far as consoles are concerned), meaning it'll have been ported over to the XB1, as well.

EVERY multiplat is, by its very nature, a port.

Anyway, I count 14 games with release dates for this year on Vita, and another 54 targeting this year http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... Don't think the list is completely up to date, but that's 68 games, one way or another. Some of them are ports, some of them are exclusives. Some of them are system sellers.

There's really only one game that MIGHT sell me on a Wii U, and it has to be spectacular in order to do so: X. The game that doesn't even have an actual name yet. The only other game outside of it that interests me is Bayonetta; those two games aren't enough to warrant me spending $250-300 on a console.

On the Vita, Gravity Rush was my system seller, and worth every penny. Soul Sacrifice was awesome. I spent an easy hundred hours play MLB The Show. P4G is a MUST HAVE. Wipeout was great. BlazBlue transferred over perfectly. Super Stardust was right at home. Sound Shapes is tons of fun. Zero Escape is a great challenge. PS All Stars was just as fun as on console. I had to stop myself from getting too wrapped up in the Atelier games to play other stuff. Muramasa has me trying to get my first platinum. And Toro's Friend Network was just too different to NOT like.

Games that I haven't played yet that interest me are:

Toukiden
DOA5+
Quell Memento
Dragon's Crown
Killzone
Tearaway
Ys
Cosmic Star Heroine
Freedom Wars
Project Diva f
Mind Zero
Monster Monpiece
Murasaki Baby
Final Fantasy X/X-2

and some more I can't think of that I don't see listed.

Folks are too hung up on "system sellers." Frankly, only Gravity Rush has EVER been that one game on a gaming device for me. Any other time, it's been about the library as a whole that sold the system. And as I look at the Vita's library, I can't see myself NOT owning one.

By contrast, the Wii U's library- and most Nintendo lineups, if I'm being honest- just doesn't have enough games to entice me to buy. It took the Wii most of its life to do that, and the same with the 360(the DS and 3DS are another story, entirely, since they're so full of great JRPGs and unique titles like Trace Memory and the Ace Attorney series). What you call a system seller, I call another entry in a franchise that has never really interested me in the first place.

[Kevlar009]

Two points I'd like to bring up

The quote about Nintendo doing well made no mention of WiiU, just that the 3DS would have a strong year which would directly benefit Nintendo's bottom line (he could've said the WiiU would do well, but not from the one article I saw)

The other is he's merely stating a fact the Vita is struggling (compared to the competition). He then goes to talk about a few problems he sees the Vita having, namely the price of certain models and memory cards

There is no question the PS4 and 3DS are performing well and will continue to sell well, it's their other products which have uncertain futures

[KakashiHotake]

Fanboys hate to hear the truth. They only take things from articles that apply to their brand and hear what they want to hear even if that wasn't the point of the article. It's quite sad really.

[CocoWolfie]

what would you guys do to fix this? i honestly think a bit more promotion and games like borderlands 2 and promoting that would help, but yeah this is kinda sad..

[vazurahan]

GTAV and MGSV after Borderlands 2.

They should bring this back as a AAA games console.

Just like Smash Bros. being made for both home and handheld console. You can't assume that every body who buys a handheld console already have the home console.

Remote Play is awesome, it will allow it to piggy backride on the success of the PS4. But that also means it will only sell to PS4 owners.

In order to sell to none PS4 owners, it needs to have AAA blockbuster games regardless if they are exclusive or not.

You sell it for the portability not exclusivity.

[beakeroo1]

Vita sales are on the rise, not sure which list of titles the above user saw but I saw a lot of new games that were'nt just ports coming to vita this year. Also when games get simultaneous releases on Vita/PS3/PS4 why is it considered a port towards the Vita?? Many of these 'ports ' are actually a better experience on the handheld.

[vazurahan]

True.

The expectations of some people on the Vita is just too much.

They keep asking for exclusives. It's true that it's Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft responsibility to provide exclusives for their consoles, but not so much for third parties.

Third party games for the Vita should be the multiplatform games they release for consoles.

Do you really expect Activision to release a main-entry COD exclusive to let's say XBOX360 alone? Or Rockstart making GTAV exclusive to PS3 alone? Or Skyrim PS3 exclusive alone?

Western third party AAA games expectations for the Vita are just too much. The third parties should be allowed to release multiplatform games on it.

[rhap]

I'm loving my Vita since the very first day I bought it and played Gravity Rush. Finished Sorcery Saga yesterday and I just got home from work rushing everything to be able to start Ys tonight. Then, after it, I'll have to find time to play Virtue's Last Reward, Atelier Meruru Plus and Tearaway before they release FFX-2HD, Toukiden, Kagerou, Mind Zero and many other games!

Really, I don't give a damn to what people say about it, I'm having lots of fun with my non-considered-system-seller-g ames, probably more than people who only wait for the same games to release every year: cod, bf, gta, ac, halo.