It's 2012, and as of today, the PlayStation Vita is only two weeks away. New games are continuously being announced for it, like Unit 13 and Mortal Kombat. Games are up for sale on PSN, Taco Bell is doing a promotion for giving away the system, and the early bundles are getting ready to ship out a week early to impatient pre-orderers. Hype is mounting for the new handheld that could, and it's taking on a lot more followers as it grows.
The Vita is not without its challenges. Heavy on the minds of Sony and the most hardcore industry followers is the abysmal sales in Japan following a single week of decent launch numbers. Like the 3DS before it, many take it as a bad omen with far-reaching implications. Calling it dead before it's had a chance at long-term success might seem dumb to most, but there a handful of folks with a mentality of absolutes, and a whole news industry that makes that sort of speculative sensationalism their business. Of course, some said the same things about the PSP, but somewhere out there it eventually felt out a place for a foothold, and rose to phenomenal success in an isolated, but no less fervent niche. It's always better late than never.
The 3DS took some maneuvering to negotiate its current success, and it wasn't without its scuff marks. Some might say the $80 price drop tarnished its brand, and injured gamers' trust in Nintendo. But while it might have seemed desperate and a little dirty, it did the deed, combined with some key must-haves that were shoved out the doors in time for the Yuletide season. It's in a position now of repeating some of its predecessor's early success, and that's nothing to wrinkle your nose at.
But is that what it's going to take for Sony to see similar results with the Vita? The $250 price point may seem like a good deal for the hardware sandwiched between those touch panels, but it comes with an asterisk at the end pointing to some nasty hidden costs that diminish its value for most people. Sony looks to be hoping their pockets will feel a little fuller if they can get consumers to pay for arbitrarily-priced memory cards specially suited to their device, at not-so-cutting-edge storage capacities. How many games can you fit in 8GB? If we're talking current-gen caliber HD titles, probably not a whole lot.
Estimates put the cost of the actual parts at around $160 (this includes 3G), meaning Sony has a little wiggle room to play with the price -- a lot more than they usually get with their hardware. Supposedly Nintendo went from an even wider margin, down to a loss on each system sold after its infamous rollback, and though it may actually have more cash in reserve for such losses than Sony, it could mean that something in the realm of a $50 drop off of the base model wouldn't be out of the question, especially if speculation regarding the limited future of the 3G model turns out to be true. Sony may be better off discontinuing the more expensive SKU rather than dropping its price if it doesn't sell very well, and that will simplify the buying process for consumers and put the Vita in an overall more attractive position.
The big question is whether or not such a move will be necessary once we finally find out how the rest of the world takes to the new system. Most will argue that the launch library has more western appeal than Japanese appeal, and the same may go for the system itself, where flashy HD graphics may not be a big deal to a population still celebrating the virtues of the PSP. Sony had little choice releasing the Vita when they did, but for Japan, any time would have been too early with Sony's first portable still reigning supreme. It may be in their best interest to push the Vita more heavily in foreign countries and let Japan bask in the glow of cheap, outdated hardware for a while longer.
If I was a betting man I'd say the Vita will do extremely well out of the gate, which isn't exactly a controversial prediction to make. With a larger population, and a better suited audience, that initial sales week will look a great deal better than Japan's did, and the fall-off won't be nearly as drastic. Supposing Sony can keep the fire burning with some good releases at a consistent clip, I see the Vita as being the polar opposite of the PSP: a success elsewhere in the world while slow-to-start in the land of the rising Godzilla. While I'm sure Sony's hometown holds a special place in their heart, I don't think they'll mind such an outcome, since in the end, Europe and North America pull in the big bucks, not Japan. If down the road Japan eventually drops the PSP for its younger brother, they'll be fine with that too, but in a surprising twist the 3DS may prove to be even more competition there. These things seem to be decided by the release of one super-mega game, and Sony definitely does not carry any certainty in that regard.
The question is, does simply being new give the 3DS the legs to last the marathon of this generation, or will its technical similarities with PSP eventually catch up with it and leave the Vita the only true contender? The Wii proved past conventions wrong, and may well inform the future for Nintendo's handheld, especially since the portable arena is seldom a market driven by hardware superiority. Personally, the Vita is everything I could ever hope for in a handheld, and while the 3DS has some great games already, and a hopeful future, its somewhat lackluster presence in my gaming schedule feels like it may be more of an omen for its future than any sales charts can tell. It may very well be that the greater part of the gamer market will feel the same way, once all the Mario games have come and gone and they crave something new to play. That didn't matter in the end for the Wii, but then its sales as of late haven't been so hot, have they?
