PSV Sony Says It Needs to 'Do a Better Job' with the PS Vita

[David Sanchez]

I'm pretty sure we can all agree that the Vita isn't exactly a sales success. Now, this isn't indicative of the handheld's tech specs, which are actually quite impressive. No, this is fact. Simply put, the Vita isn't very popular, and its low sales reflect that greatly. In fact, a report on MCV indicates that the low hardware figures for the device have driven Sony to cut its annual forecast of portable sales.

Sony Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Masaru Kato acknowledges that the Vita is in an ugly place right now, citing that the decreased annual forecast is due to "slow penetration of the Vita." Now, aside from Kato's humorous choice of words, there's no denying that the EVP and CFO is on to something.

"Now one thing clear for us that in terms of profitability, we have to do a better job in promoting the PlayStation Vita mobile product," stated Kato.

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[hush404]

Price drop is all they really need to do in their strategy. There are some solid games, more coming, its a nice system... people just aren't willing to fork over $250+, much like they weren't willing to do so for the 3DS; which then saw a price drop and much better sales.

 

[Trigun]

I would've payed 250$ for it at launch if it wasn't such a rip-off filled with hidden costs and broken promises.

Add to that now, either developers don't have a good handle on the system or Sony just didn't give it enough power.

A handheld system with most games running sub-native resolution is unacceptable in my eyes.

 

[FrozenIpaq]

It's a great device but lacks a good game library. It needs a "killer app" like all major consoles do when it's released. Most of the games on it you can play through once and never look back.

 

[x3sphere]

I would've payed 250$ for it at launch if it wasn't such a rip-off filled with hidden costs and broken promises.

Add to that now, either developers don't have a good handle on the system or Sony just didn't give it enough power.

A handheld system with most games running sub-native resolution is unacceptable in my eyes.

I think it could be a similar case as with the PSP - in the first few years developers could not use the full power of the system as Sony downclocked the CPU to 222MHz to save on battery life. Only later revisions of the official SDK allowed devs to use 333MHz.

Killzone: Mercenary is a good display of what the handheld can do with proper optimization. Sony needs more games like that to stand out against the 3DS.

The thing that gets me with the Vita is the cost of memory cards, still can't pick up a 32GB on the cheap. And why is that the max size anyway- there should be a 64GB option.

 

[FrozenIpaq]

I think it could be a similar case as with the PSP - in the first few years developers could not use the full power of the system as Sony downclocked the CPU to 222MHz to save on battery life. Only later revisions of the official SDK allowed devs to use 333MHz.

Killzone: Mercenary is a good display of what the handheld can do with proper optimization. Sony needs more games like that to stand out against the 3DS.

The thing that gets me with the Vita is the cost of memory cards, still can't pick up a 32GB on the cheap. And why is that the max size anyway- there should be a 64GB option.

Yeah storage is a huge issue. I've got a 4gb card that barely covers it in this digital age. I'd like to download more games but can't due to the size limitation of my card. It's way to expensive to get a new card at this point (it's pretty much the cost of a new game to upgrade my memory).

 

[LocutusEstBorg]

Hidden costs, worse graphics than iOS, lack of storage, poor battery life (iPad does 8 hours of graphics intensive gaming such as Infinity Blade 2), bullshit "Apps". Graphics worse than iOS (yeah that needs to be said twice).

 

[x3sphere]

Hidden costs, worse graphics than iOS, lack of storage, poor battery life (iPad does 8 hours of graphics intensive gaming such as Infinity Blade 2), bullshit "Apps". Graphics worse than iOS (yeah that needs to be said twice).

Have you seen the gameplay footage for Killzone: Mercenary? Looks better than any iOS game I've seen.

I have faith it'll run at native res too. Guerrilla Games is a very capable studio. That's the problem with a lot of Vita titles so far - they've been outsourced to devs that usually just handle simple ports. Resistance Retribution, and that Call of Duty Declassified are prime examples.

 

[FrozenIpaq]

Have you seen the gameplay footage for Killzone: Mercenary? Looks better than any iOS game I've seen.

I have faith it'll run at native res too. Guerrilla Games is a very capable studio. That's the problem with a lot of Vita titles so far - they've been outsourced to devs that usually just handle simple ports. Resistance Retribution, and that Call of Duty Declassified are prime examples.

Really excited for Killzone on the Vita, looks like one of the best titles yet. Too bad it's so far away

 

[LocutusEstBorg]

Have you seen the gameplay footage for Killzone: Mercenary? Looks better than any iOS game I've seen.

I get what you're saying. The effects are much fancier and the world is populated in a much better way which gives it a AAA feel like a console game. However if you take an in-game screenshot and look at it 1:1 next to an iOS screenshot, the image is blurry, the textures are muddy and inconsistent and the overall rendering quality is poor. Whereas the iOS screenshot looks like it's rendered at maximum quality like a screenshot from a PC game. Just like how console screenshots (even native non-upscaled 1280x720 screenshots) look like crap compared to PC at the same graphical settings. The rendered image quality is just crap.

It's like the whole thing is running at 16-bit colour or something and the output image is just substandard. Just compare the PS Vita's homescreen with the iOS homescreen. The iOS homescreen is flawless 32-bit colour, extremely crisp and pretty much looks like a lossless PNG. The PS Vita's homescreen is a bunch of low quality images that artifact when you move them.

Even when they do make the interface look like a sharp 32-bit colour lossless image, it lags horribly. Case in point: the new PSN store on the PS3. The image quality of the interface is very high, but it lags like a Symbian S60 phone.