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business newsSony's PS Vita Victimized by Apple iPhone, Android
By
Michael Comeau
Dec 30, 2011 11:45 am
Sales of Sony's PS Vita handheld collapsed in the second week after release.
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I make more than my share of screw-ups, but if I've nailed anything over the past couple of years, it's been the transition to a smartphone-dominated mobile-gaming market. (See: Smartphone Games Likely to Hinder 3DS Success.)
The two traditional powers in mobile gaming have been Nintendo and Sony (SNE) -- but the times, they are a changin'.
Nintendo struggled to get this year's 3DS off the ground, resorting to an aggressive and early price cut to boost sales. (See: Nintendo Joins the Long List of Apple Victims.) And remember, the 3DS was the successor to the DS, the best-selling handheld gaming device in history, having moved nearly 150 million units.
Unfortunately for those holding onto the past, Sony's PS Vita handheld just hit the skids in its second week on the market in Japan, a land long regarded as a stronghold for old-school mobile gaming.
According to the market-research firm Media Create, sales of the PS Vita went from 325K in its first week to 72K in the second -- a drop of nearly 80%.
The PS Vita is no doubt an impressive device, with its dynamite screen, wi-fi/3G capabilities, and high-speed processor, but as we've seen with the 3DS, plenty of folks are seeing no need to pay up for a fancy new mobile-gaming platform.
My theory has been, and continues to be, that average people are realizing that they're perfectly happy with what they've already got in their pockets -- an Apple (AAPL) iPhone or Google (GOOG) Android smartphone, or increasingly, an iPad.
If you've been paying attention to the news out of companies like Google, Qualcomm (QCOM), and Broadcom (BRCM), then you know that smartphone sales, particularly when it comes to high-priced models like the iPhone 4S and Motorola (MMI) DROID Razr, are absolutely booming.
And Nintendo and Sony just haven't given folks enough compelling reasons to shell out another $170 to $300 for a device that requires them to pony up $30 a pop for new games.
On the actual gaming-experience front, we can all agree that the 3DS and PS Vita are much better gaming devices than any phone. But $0.99 for a game that runs on something I already own -- sounds good to me! Does it stink? Who cares? It's $0.99!
And just look at the trends in content consumption today.
If consumers really cared about technical quality, they wouldn't be stealing subpar mp3s, watching poorly-recorded viral videos on YouTube, and blowing up Twitter and Facebook with blurry smartphone photos. People value convenience and instant entertainment/distraction over everything else -- the same logic applies to video games.
I mean, Angry Birds has been downloaded over 350 million times -- what does that tell you?
Twitter: @MichaelComeau
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