It's not hard to do, because it seems like they both target the same market, and it's still a market without any other contenders. But while dedicated gaming handhelds is a two-horse race, both the 3DS and the Vita share a daunting fight with many other mobile devices for essentially the same goal: providing on-the-go entertainment.
The 3DS enjoys the safety of Nintendo's protective sphere of niche appeal. Nintendo will always provide experiences with their own franchises that no others can, and that means they'll always have a certain market to themselves, and one that has been proven over and over again to be non-trivial. Whatever happens in the tablet and smartphone space, they're essentially safe.
Vita doesn't get that protection. The games that appeal the most on Vita are already established IPs on HD consoles. They are games that became popular with the current console generation, and they lose much of their luster without the HD graphics aspect. They are the blockbuster, Hollywood-esque franchises that made it big on large living room TVs, and until Vita gets some original must-have franchises of its own, that will always be the case.
Those are games that have never sold gangbusters on handhelds, but there's another problem. Cellphone games are catching up to the consoles in graphics. If a big appeal of the games on Vita is the graphics, then what happens if the phone you carry around with you everywhere can match them? What if it can surpass them?
It's already happening. Between Unreal Engine 3 games like Infinity Blade II and the newly-released Horn, graphics are just the length of a prepubescent scrotum hair from matching Vita's. iPhones get the closest because they enjoy the benefits of a set hardware spec within an OS that's more performance-friendly. Android compensates with slightly more cutting-edge hardware, and already smartphones and tablets exist that match (or slightly exceed) the specs of the Vita. Next year will see another explosion in graphics performance with the move to unified shaders. All it takes is games to utilize them, and so far they're pretty quick to do so.
To that I'd say "well screw you!" but I'll relent. Yes, the Vita can do what cellphones can't because it has the physical controls that real gamers want. But is that really enough? You might also say that games on cellphones will never compare to full experiences that Vita will inherit from its older console brothers. But the depth of cellphone games are growing. You can create full experiences without the use of physical controls, and the games that fare the worst on cellphones are the ones that try to emulate them. Cellphones are powerful enough to handle ports of former console games, like GTAIII, Max Payne, and Dead Space. They even get a lot of games that aren't ports but borrow heavily from console games, such as Mass Effect Infiltrator, Shadow Gun, and a multitude of FPS games. But really, they shouldn't. More and more, devs are realizing that the best experiences on cellphones come from those tailor-made for the platform.
There are inherent limitations to creating a game that only accepts mouse-like input. At some points you have to limit the movement of your character, make heavy use of timing events, and turn much of what would be controlled manually into automatic actions. But in the end you get less frustration, more intuitive gameplay, and less of your thumbs blocking the screen. Games that have seemingly simple mechanics can receive added depth thanks to good writing and RPG elements. All in all, touch controls are a much easier puzzle to solve than motion controls or Kinect. And we see devs improving in their approach all the time.
In the end though, we're talking about games that you play when you're away from home. Since we don't live in Japan, most of us travel by way of self-transportation. Once we reach our destination, there's usually very little free time. You'll rarely run into situations with more than 30 minutes of waiting, and that's certainly not worth bringing your Vita along for. Games like Horn will offer more than enough depth in those cases. Unless you travel by plane or train on a frequent basis, there's practically no point in buying a Vita for portable gaming
That leaves gaming at home, and as we've seen from Gamescom last week, the good news is that franchise entries on the Vita aren't always ports of console games. Assassin's Creed III: Liberation thankfully continues to push graphics on the system, and offers a unique protagonist and story that you won't find elsewhere. Killzone Mercenary promises to do the same for the FPS series in 2013, and I'd be saying the same thing about COD: Black OPS II: Declassified, except the unfortunate news of the developer coupled with a resoundingly lackluster trailer leaves that game looking rather disappointing.
If you're the truly rare sort that likes to have console games tit-for-tat on the Vita (and I'm one of them), you'll be happy to know that there is an extremely faithful port of NFS: Most Wanted hitting the system, and others like Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Ratchet and Clank: Full Frontal Assault, and PS All-Stars Battle Royale will have cross-play and cross-buy support, netting you a portable copy of the game when you buy the $60 console version.
Hopefully some of those catch on, because it's clear that what's been on the table so far hasn't been enough to convince anyone that the Vita is a must-have. In my last rambling on the Vita I lamented the fact that NPD numbers were hard to come by. Even though people were already assuming the worst, it was probably for the best we didn't know for sure, because what finally surfaced painted a very grim picture indeed of what North America thought of the jack-of-all-trades handheld. Less than 50k sold in July came the ominous news on NeoGaf. Obviously it was a slow period in terms of software releases, but it showed that despite what many saw as more western-leaning appeal didn't do anything to garner more sales here than in Japan.
The Vita faces a challenge tougher than the PSP did. The PSP was expensive when the DS wasn't. The PSP was very flawed in a lot of ways, from the media used for its games, to the stunted controls, and the many months of skimpy software releases after its debut. Eventually though, it found a niche, and software releases picked up along with sales. It never had to face smartphones head-on like the Vita though.
Barring something catastrophic, the Vita will continue fighting what will remain near-insurmountable odds unless it can be made more attractive. Bundles may help, but short of a real price-drop, it may only be a band-aid solution. One of the things I think really hurts the public perception of the system is the 3G version. I've seen more than one occasion where someone has misquoted the price of the Vita to be $299, and that should never happen. Joe Shmoe perusing the videogame aisle at Wal-Mart shouldn't have a hard time telling the difference between the $249 Vita and the $299 Vita, not understanding what 3G is or what it can do. The truth is, it does very little. It adds next to nothing useful to the system, and serves only to confuse uneducated consumers. It's bad enough that the base system doesn't come equipped with a basic memory card, but when even a few believe the minimum cost to be $299, you're not aiding the perceived cost issue. The 3G version needs to be dropped as soon as possible, and when it is, it may do as well as a real price-drop for some segments of the market.
When it comes down to it, I believe the biggest problem the Vita faces is a software problem, and that's been a core truth of console gaming since its inception. You're not going to sell your platform without the games, and before you can say price is a barrier, or that the competition's too great, you better make sure you have a great line-up of top-quality games. If it still doesn't hook people, then look elsewhere for reasons. People buy iPads despite the fact that they can't make phone calls and they're not cheap, because they see enough value from portable internet browsing and the AppStore. Make compelling games that create enough value for the system, and people will pay the price for it.
