Is the vita valid?
A few nights have passed since Sony announced the latest addition to their PlayStation brand; the PS4. That system however is not the main focus of this post, that honor happens belong to Sony’s new portable console the PlayStation vita. Vita meaning life in Latin and boy is that system getting non of from games and strangely enough also its manufacture. Now I am not ignorant to the fact that video game development takes a lot of time, but you have to at least put out some incentive/bait to catch the fish and Sony I’m sorry but the water around that pound seems empty to me. Take the 3DS it started off slow and didn’t have much of what people wanted at the start but now look at it its breaking records and selling like crazy. All because big N started releasing games that most of their hardcore demographic care about. To date the 3DS has a 3D Mario, a 2D Mario, Star fox, Zelda, Fire emblem, etc (notice i only mention first party games). So what does the vita have uncharted golden abyss………….wait what other first party Sony franchises have been put on vita that Gamers actually care about?. That’s right I can’t think of any and neither can most of you reading this. Some might argue but Q? What about resistance and little big planet? Well I’ll gladly answer that. Resistance is one of Sony best franchises but the vita version was not up to par, at least not enough to get people to put money down on it, and LBP vita is not a system seller, if it were we’d all have a vita by now.
The price of the damn thing doesn’t help its case either, with the vita’s $250 – $300 US price tag and that’s not counting the expensive ass propriety memory cards you’re going to have to buy to store your downloadable content and save data, which Sony confirmed they are not cutting the price of either out of Japan at the moment is killing the handhelds momentum.
What Sony needs to do to get the vita in the Hands of us Gamers is show us more games that are exclusive to the vita that are Sony household name like infamous, G.O.W, etc. Having IP’s like these exclusive to platform are positive ways to encourage a system purchase. They also need to show more about the system (what are their pr doing?). The simple announcement of Pokemon on 3DS bolstered sales and raised interest in the system, a good infamous or god of war game announcement can do something similar for the psv.
They also need to take a price cut on it, lose a little money why won’t you. The more systems in Gamers hands the more games you can sell, ergo profit.
I’m personally rooting for the vita because it has some potential to be amazing, it just needs that extra push.
Question what game would get you to buy a vita? leave you comments down below and have a wonderful day.
The vita is slow to take off because people are wary of it. When sony launched the PSP they made a big thing about it, made it the ‘it’ handheld device. then they threw it out and released the PSP Go, then barely before people started to get the new device they threw it out again and released the Vita. As such fans are wary about blowing more money on a device that’ll be replaced by another in a few months.
The high cost of the Vita isn’t as big a hurdle as people claim it is either, since if you look at the costs of the other devices sony have released, they’re all relatively level.
The big concern however is that games aren’t being made for it, the reason being, see above. Because sony keep churning out the consoles devs are now scared of embracing the new one. Reason being, it’s a new coding they have to learn. Coding for the vita is (apparently) a pain in the arse compared with the the PSP. Also, despite the Vita being out for so long people still use their PSP, why? Because they have game they love and since they can’t be carried over to the new device they don’t want to move yet.
This is a problem the PS4 will have when it releases, people won’t want to buy it because they still have their PS3 games that they love, but can’t play them on the new device. It’s not like you could take your old device to the store and part-x it for the new, and just keep using your old games. Much like how you could when the PS2 and PS3 first launched.
Price is really irrelevant, if you have the game people want they’ll buy the game. For example, when Persona 4 Golden launched there was a spike in Vita sales. I even bought one just so i could play Persona. What they need is to embrace a device and say right, for the next x ammount of years this will be the device we use.
Ultimatly that’s why the PS3 and 360 did so well, they’ve been around for so long dev’s know how to code for them really well these days.