Thanks to aggressively-priced bundles, it did get a boost. It sold about 160,000 units during Black Friday, the most active period of the year for gift buying. This is a huge boost for a system that can only manage 50k in an average month. From a microscopic viewpoint, this is really good news. From an industry-wide perspective, this is pretty bad.
Compared to consoles still currently available on the market (PSP excluded), the Vita sold the worst, by far, on Black Friday, at almost 100k underneath the second-lowest seller. That system was the 3DS at 250k, followed by the DS by a small margin, the Wii, the Wii U, the PS3 (525k), and the 360 (750k) at the top. Considering how gracefully the sales numbers rise after the 3DS, the Vita seems like it's in a category of its own.
What does this mean, if anything? It might mean that price isn't the problem. A lot of people will tell you that a simple $50 price drop will save the Vita. That and maybe a memory card packed with every system. While that should definitely be the standard offer, the truth is that people's interest in the Vita isn't suddenly killed at the price wall. Awesome bundle deals didn't open the floodgates to hundreds of thousands of curious fence-sitters. The interest simply isn't there to begin with.
Why, though? It's certainly not because of the hardware. As Kotaku opined recently in an article about the Vita's troubles, the system itself is great. Sony's treatment of it has been the failing.
A lot of it is marketing. Can you remember a time in recent history where Microsoft, Nintendo, or Apple launched a major new product and did next to nothing to promote it? It's unheard of! Microsoft and Apple in particular spend billions just on advertising their wares as the next Messiah. But the PSVITA is a total unknown. As PlayStationLifestyle points out, awareness of the system is extremely low. People either don't know what it is, or they don't care. Scant TV ads, next to no product tie-ins, and a very underwhelming presence on billboards has undoubtedly contributed to the problem.
Sony is not a company making cash hand-over-fist. They routinely post losses, and their credit rating and market share in some of their major businesses is abysmally low. They can obviously justify some trepidation at taking risks with their money, and my guess is that their decisions on where to do their spending on pushing the Vita are limited to just a couple of options: either invest in long-term sales of the system through game development, or take a loss on pushing the system now.
Sony has stated "it's a marathon, not a sprint" when it comes to the Vita. Their strategy is clearly long-term, and that's evident through doing heavy promotion on games like ACIII and COD Declassified, where one might speculate money bags were involved in seeing their development. It's also clear through job postings that Sony is investing heavily in their internal studios to create more games for the platform. Unfortunately Sony isn't candid on what those projects are, and the software slate for next year remains foggy at best.
Nintendo provides a clear contrast to Sony's handheld strategy. They started off much the same way that the Vita did for the first several months, overpricing the 3DS and holding off on first-party releases in favor of a staggered and more cadenced software schedule. When that produced sales well short of their expectations, they reacted quickly, drastically lowering the price at a loss, and pushing for a much tighter game calender. Then they had a sales renaissance.
As a result, games were no longer getting canceled on the 3DS. Third party interest increased. People were more attracted to the system, the install base grew, and a shift to short-term sales pretty much assured their long-term success. Sony can't hope to have system sellers like Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land to pull their coals out of the fire, but there's still a lot to learn from Nintendo's experiences. Games are vitally important, but so is having people that own the system. If you have the sales, then you don't have to hand out checks to get third party developers to make games for you.
But as Kotaku pointed out, lowering the price isn't all that's needed. You can take a loss on the system in hopes of getting a short-term boost, but if you don't deliver on "Console quality on-the-go", it won't matter much.
So far that hasn't happened. ACIII Liberation was a disappointment. It's boring, and doesn't live up to the quality of even the first game in the series. I felt the same way about Uncharted Golden Abyss, honestly. Call of Duty on the Vita is one of the lowest scoring games released on it so far. These three games should have been the heavy hitters for the system, but they fall short of expectations set by their console brethren.
The Vita does have console-quality games. It has great ports of console games like Need For Speed: Most Wanted, Rayman Origins, and multiple fighting and sports games. It also has console-quality original games, like Wipeout 2048, Gravity Rush, and LittleBigPlanet. The problem is these games are either NOT heavy hitters, or they're severely under-advertised. Whatever the case, they're not selling systems either.
What would it take, then? Aside from major price adjustments and doubling the advertising, some say a new and original GTA might be the ticket. That is, if Rockstar wants to invest the money. A sandbox GTA game on a portable rivaling current-gen consoles won't be cheap, and they're currently enjoying success with iOS devices. Sony doesn't have a lot of options within their own stable of franchises. Killzone and Infamous aren't huge sellers. Would it take a big push from SquareEnix? A new Gran Turismo game? Heavy cross-platform promotions?
It would require a lot more aggression on Sony's part. Memory storage should not be a barrier to digital sales. Sony should be enabling Vita buyers any way they can with cheap memory, and inexpensive PSN prices. Make the money off the games, not the hardware. That's how the industry has been doing things for a long time now, and digital sales have the potential to be more profitable than retail sales. If your software lineup isn't that exciting for the coming months, promote the hell out of current games. Lots of advertising; lots of deals; lots of increased awareness. When the PS4 comes out, use it to further promote the Vita. Enable second-screen features in all your first party games, and heavily advertise one alongside the other. Offer cross-buy games in BOTH directions for as long as the Vita consumer base remains small. Get more PSN games already available on the PS3 onto the Vita.
Just don't treat the Vita like it's an afterthought. Other companies know how to push their products, why doesn't Sony?
It was the same with the PSP. It was a very unremarkable system for its first ~two years.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know why, I think it's because they don't "need" it like their high profile console. Look at the floppy messes they had with PS phones. They're just throwing things out and hoping something sticks.