A look at the Soul Sacrifice launch, and marketing in general for the PSVita.
Sammy: "Two high-profile PS Vita exclusives, Freedom Wars and Soul Sacrifice, will have their servers deactivated on 24th December, 2021. Both titles, published by Sony in response to its loss of Monster Hunter exclusivity, were built around co-operative play, and maintained relatively dedicated communities to this day."
Oreshika is also getting it servers shut down too. Big shame for these games. Honestly some of Vita's gems.
I'm surprised these were even still up! Loved the Vita though, had some great times with that handheld.
These games deserve sequels or remakes. It was Soul Sacrifice that even got me into Monster Hunter.
Honestly surprised they never got ported to the ps4 or even PC. Since Sony won't give the vita another shot, wht not make a Vita collection? Could have Soul Sacrifice, Freedom Wars, KZ Mercs, Uncharted Golden Abyss, Murasaki Baby, etc. As a way to conmemorate the Vita.
This why you never should have achievements/trophies locked to online only features.
"When PlayStation Vita released in 2012, expectations were high as Sony's previous handheld (PSP) was quite successful even if it could never quite match with Nintendo's handheld juggernauts." - Tyler Hall from Video Chums
It’s not stranded until 2019, if people really wanted to get some great experiences out the way then they’d buy it. But there are so many stubborn people that made their mind up that won’t happen.
You can go on eBay, OfferUp it any social market place and get one from 70-120 WITH memory card and the games are dirt cheap. But I bet people feel like buying their 5th 3DS for 200 plus because of its color is better then checking out great games.
I guess it’s not always about the games
I could just never find one after I got a stable income, could find games all over the place though
Quite a few of the games aren't dirt cheap. Guess it depends on what you like though. The Japanese anime games tend to hold their value quite well.
One can get digital games pretty cheap a lot of the time, and if they were smart, they'd have added all those vita games on PS+ over the years, and have quite an impressive backlog when they get their system.
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VGChartz: “While the PSP definitely got off to a flying start in terms of sales thanks to the promise of console quality gaming on the go, things took a downturn in the following years due to a variety of factors including increasing competition from the DS & phones, and a lack of quality exclusives. In Japan, one franchise injected new life into the little handheld turning it from a decent seller into the must-have machine in the country - this was, of course, Monster Hunter.
Capcom's co-operative action-adventure series was born on the PS2 but found a much better audience on the PSP, where local ad-hoc play became somewhat of a phenomenon in the country. Each successive release sold better than the previous entry, culminating in Monster Hunter Portable 3rd clearing nearly 5 million copies. The stage was all set for the franchise to make the jump to Sony's new handheld in 2011, but in a surprise piece of news it was announced the series would instead be transitioning to Nintendo's new 3DS handheld.
With the audience still very much interested in buying a true next-gen successor on the Vita despite the hardware shift, other companies stepped in to attempt to plug the gap in the market, leading to a large variety of imitator franchises on the Vita. It's these series I'm intending to examine in this article - what they are (including many that actually pre-dated Monster Hunter or appeared alongside it on PSP), how many entries Vita saw, how well they sold, and how well they succeeded at providing a co-operative hunting experience.”
Lol i remember soul sacrifice, i remember when people hyped it up to be the next monster esque game, it was fun for a while but it didn't do it for me.
Honestly, story wise, I enjoyed it more than Monster Hunter, but it's comparing apples to oranges really.
I don't play monster hunter for story, honestly the monster games have terrible stories but I still love them. I couldn't stand the bland environments in soul sacrifice and having to regenerate the abilities.
Freedom wars, God eater, Toukiden, and soul sacrifice I loved. Well the single player stories that is which is the one thing the mh games lacked to me. Very underrated games.
wow wow stop there lack of quality exclusives? Crisis Core FFVII, Dissidia, Dissidia 012, The 3rd Birthday, KH BBS, Type 0, other SE games, 2 GOW games, DW games, MGS Peace Walker, Dragon Ball Tag Tenkaichi (best DB on the go ever), tons of best anime games including Yu Gi Oh GX, Gundam, HxH, Naruto and so more, Megan Man X, Gran Turismo, 2 GTA games, without mentioning other PS exclusives and MH. PSP main issue was the HACK, without hacking I assume psp games would had sold much better. best portable device ever. with ton of PS1 classics.
I actually thought Freedom Wars was excellent. Loved the setting, loved the combat, in some aspects I think it beats even Monster Hunter World. (Although MH's scale, scope and depth makes it better overall) I'd love to see a sequel or spiritual successor.
crazy. when i picked up my pre-order of SS even the cashier guy said "oh you must picking up Soul Sacrifice huh? damn i wish it was on ps3 or 360".if there was no copy in the store that means that they was sold out lol. and SS sell's are still counting.
Sony really does under advertise everything. It's sad.
Look at all the advertising the Wii U is doing. Is it really helping? No, so stop expecting anyone else to waste their time and money to see the same results with a device with close to the same install base.
At least Sony is smart enough to save their money instead of trying use it on marketing that really isn't going to make a bid difference right now the devices current situation.
PSP did just fine also most the games on it were never advertised heavily either.
This gen Sony's way of advertising is 'word of mouth' from the consumers. Sometimes it works & sometimes it doesn't.
Would it be nice to see Sony advertise like they use to...remember the Crash Bandicoot ones?, or the insane FF VII movie-like ads? Yeah Sony is capable of doing that but after losing so much on the PS3 i understand the need to cut back on advertising until the company is stable again.