Is the PS Vita one of the biggest technological disasters of 2012? Well, according to website 24/7 Wall Street it is anyway. The site has the console listed in it’s top 8 of the Worst Product Flops of 2012 and while writer Samuel Weigley highlighted the initial low sales of the system he stated that “Frequent complaints about the Vita were that the $300 price tag was too expensive and that its game lineup was both weak and small, especially given the availability of cheaper gaming through smartphones and tablets.”
Considering the technology inside the console and the standard trend across the industry for manufacturers to sell consoles at a loss, the early price point is something that should be looked at in tandem with the specifications (does anyone remember the same comments made regarding the original price point for the first PlayStation) and for the performance it offers, a higher price than the 3DS is expected. As for the comments about the software line-up… the PS Vita currently has access to a library of almost 700 titles at retail and through the PSN Store, but this is simply a fact that has not been marketed.
For a console still in its early days (and being released during a time of global economic slowdown) hardware sales figures don’t immediately mean that the PS Vita is a flop. Certainly, comparisons with the 3DS are unfair to judge because the systems are aimed at different audiences and many 3DS owners are likely to have upgraded from the original DS console.
You can read the article in full here but what do you think about the PS Vita so far? Let us know your thoughts.
I was an early adopter of the vita having bought it at a midnight launch. The games I bought with it were great, uncharted was my favourite but the slow rate of games released made it apparent I’d bought a dud. I didn’t buy a £250 gaming system to play old PSP or ps1 games.
I keep up to date with what’s happening with the vita as I’d probably buy a new hardware revision if it had 64gb of memory built in and used standard SD cards. But at the end of the day it’s the games which make the system.
Cost of storage, no matter what format it is, usually takes time to come down in price but it’s mainly down to economies of scale. If Sony could produce the cards in larger quantities then the price can drop more rapidly.
Games wise, there has been a slow uptake at retail but many stores seem to have given priority to the 3DS primarily because of it’s backwards compatibility with the DS so it can be marketed alongside it. From the PSN Store there are some great dedicated games available but the Vita does have the same issue that the PS3 had… with the increase in power that it has over the 3DS it takes a lot longer to develop for so games will take longer to be released.
While you certainly won’t see integrated storage or SD cards, existing cards will drop in price and there’s plenty of great stuff out there already and on the way that may just bring you back…!
I had both I have sold the 3DS
Vita has “EXTORTIONATE RIP OFF MEMORY CARDS” way better priced digital games with the benefit of PlayStation Plus way more games variety & price reduction for my personal game choices. I do prefer the graphics the feel of the console & the game content.
3DS has cheap memory cards with most of it’s library of past & future games being 90% SHOVELWARE. Wii Ware 15 pages later & i only found 2 games I liked.
Its digital games are a rip off it’s idea of a sale is 2 games as of 30/12/12 pathetic.
3DS is all about being 3D & not about the graphics or the content of the game filling all games with tons of text (NO 1 WANTS 2 READ) long loading times for demos of which u can play 30 times ONLY!
The great games they do have are not enough to compensate for the 90% of bad unoriginal poor variety games they offer.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong having a selection of back-catalogue titles available to download – certainly the PS Vita has a fair selection with the PS1 and PSP range available to it – but looking at what is on offer for the 3DS the prices do seem high for the old Gameboy and NES titles on offer.
It does seem to be a trade-off with the cost of games being more expensive because there is potentially no income for Nintendo from memory card sales, but it is a critical factor that Sony needs to address.
With the advent of Playstation Plus being available for the Vita now, we have a great range of games available more affordably than ever, but with them all being downloadable we need the space to store them. The only alternative is to use a couple of smaller cards and then use Content Manager to copy games to your PC temporarily when you don’t want to play them to free up space.