Lord Ghirahim
Member
uk.ign.com/articles/2013/03/06/playstation-vita-sales-see-massive-spike-in-japan
...which is objectively correct, by Vita standards.
PlayStation Vita Sales See Massive Spike in Japan (nearly six times increase)
- Thread starter Hydrogen Bluebird
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uk.ign.com/articles/2013/03/06/playstation-vita-sales-see-massive-spike-in-japan
...which is objectively correct, by Vita standards.
The PSP did well because it had good third party support. It's not there anymore, so you have to pull out all the stops in order to make your platform successful, and that starts by putting at least some of your best studios on that console. Not to mention that there's the perception that handheld games are inferior to console games, a perception that Sony isn't willing to change by putting out a numbered, mainline sequel of any of their franchises on the Vita. Nintendo, by contrast, puts out things like Mario Kart 7, making no distinction. It's all about public perception.
DQ has always been Nintendo handheld exclusive.
And MonHun was likely something they had no control over. Sony's relationship with Capcom hasn't been particularly great post-PS1 for some reason and Nintendo made Capcom what is rumored to be a pretty sweet deal on the likely lead handheld for the generation.
GT sells eight figures globally. Wheels sell like shit. Seems safe to say that >90% of all GT buyers find playing with analog or D-pad control to work just fine.
FlutterPuffs
Member
5 times from the previous week is a massive spike. The same would be said of Wii U if they got out the slump they are in now.
Sony does have significant first party studios working on it. Sony Bend and Team Siren have both made strong initially titles and are likely working on follow ups or new IPs for the Vita. They also have both Guerrilla Games and Mm making new titles for it, the former in the Killzone IP and the later a totally new IP just for the Vita.
This is in addition to a host of smaller PSN releases, using up and coming teams to get strong iterations in existing IPs like LittleBigPlanet Vita out, etc..
Unlike Nintendo Sony is a console company first, portable company second. As a result their strongest IPs are tied to the home theater experience and that is where the strength of many first party studios lie. At the same time they're about to launch the PS4, Sony's most important product release in a VERY long time, and are trying to capitalize on all the hard work Hirai has done to bring the PS3 back from the pit it dug itself at launch.
I'd say for a company trying to monetize the PS3 user base AND launch new hardware they're putting a pretty decent number of exclusives/first party studios/second party partners on the Vita.
You could make this same complaint about Nintendo to the opposite extreme. Why is Nintendo pushing all these solid first party titles on the 3DS when the Wii U is out with no firm dates given on more major first party content? Wouldn't Mario Kart 7 at Wii U launch been a bigger release than everything else they had? They chose not to do that and instead made a 3DS exclusive iteration despite having their next console in the wings.
Its all a matter of priorities. Sony pushes strong first party support on Vita. It can't be their very best teams all the time because the console is their strongest foothold. Nintendo is building strong first party support for the Wii U, but it can't necessarily arrive on time when they have the 3DS as their strongest foothold. Just the way it goes for any company offering multiple platforms.
The Vita is struggling because the handheld market is taking a beating from smartphones. Nintendo and Japanese 3rd parties have consolidated the market on the 3DS in Japan to give them at least one last stronghold to make profit on. This was the safe play available to them. That doesn't mean the Vita can't grind out a niche for itself. A few new announcements (like GT Vita for this holiday in Japan and Europe) and strong upcoming software (Soul Sacrifice, Tearaway, KZ:Mercs, FFX:HD) could keep it's hardware sales momentum strong enough to reach Gamecube levels of hardware sales. At that point Sony can apply the same model as Nintendo to grind out a profit on the system. If Gaikai/PS4 or an unexpected AAA title (like MonHun was when it first moved from PS2 to PSP) land on the system it'll bump a little higher than that. That's the best strategy for the Vita. Keep the hardware at or near cost, keep turning out solid software looking for a breakout IP, and keep supporting owners with strong digital distro content that is building a high tie ratio and therefore a profitable environment for pubs/devs to work on.
it ain't just Sony threads. Try actually hitting up other threads for a change; otherwise you wouldn't be feeling this way.
Maastricht
Member
If you add 'in Japan' somewhere, more people are likely to agree with you. I don't feel many can complain about the West - few platforms have had as good a first year as the Vita in terms of software support.
electroplankton
Banned
I think the problem is more on the attention given by the news.
Every week (well, almost) there's something weird, or at least to talk about, in Japanese sales. I mean, the fact that Animal Crossing is selling more than 70k units every week and is becoming one of the best-selling games ever in Japan (without having so much expectations behind), is a bigger news that this one; or even how low Vita has been selling since last spike in January. Yet, no gaming news website is talking about them. I mean, some gaming webiste in Italy in order to write "Vita is beating 3DS in Japan!" as a title, already put 3DS and 3DS XL separately in the chart, just to make the news sound more juicy.
If the goalposts are placed somewhere around 'the Vita has no games announced for the future', it seems natural to move those goalposts to a likely place for game announcements. I don't think it's a game, I think it's common sense.
Is it possible that we've already seen the last Vita retail titles announced? Sure. Is it likely? No.
jeremy1456
Junior Member
It was never going to be a surprise that Animal Crossing is selling well. Considering the runaway success that was Wild World it isn't very surprising. It is selling at a faster rate than I expected, but its not altogether surprising.
Did you not expect it to sell millions?
AbandonedTrolley
Member
I let go the other week, fortunately I had my wrist strap attached and it's still alive and kicking!
The Vita is far from dead as my Vita backlog will let me know. Even IF it were dead, I've played enough games on there and have enough that I would still be happy with my purchase. BUT given that it's going to work with the PS4 and remote play, the Vita is FAR from dead and will be shouting and screaming for a good few more years yet.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Shit, we've stirred up the Dreamcast fans now! ;-)
michaelius
Banned
Don't hold your breath waiting for it to be discontinued- lack of oxygen for next 5 years might be dangerous for you.
Newsflash: noone cares about Animal Crossing among typical gaming website audiences.
Nice read. I agree
I agree that the Vita could easily find a niche within the market. But in Japan, Sony's biggest selling title is Hot Shots Golf. They have one franchise that does anything of significance there, and that's Gran Turismo. We're not seeing any titles from Capcom, Konami, or Square Enix, companies that have traditionally supported the PSP very well. And why is that? Because Sony isn't putting out enough big-selling titles to build up a sufficient userbase. These are all of the retail titles coming to the Vita in America for the next six months:
03/19 Dead or Alive 5 Plus
04/30 Soul Sacrifice
04/30 Zombie Tycoon 2: Brainhov's Revenge
06/25 Muramasa Rebirth
09/03 Valhalla Knights 3
09/17 Killzone: Mercenary
09/24 Ys: Memories of Celceta
Even the Gamecube, one of the most drought prone consoles in the history of gaming, never had droughts like these. This is similar to the type of support the N64 had in 2001, when it was getting phased out for the GC, and even it had bigger titles than Soul Sacrifice or Killzone (Paper Mario). Almost all of these titles listed are going to be available on other platforms. Not saying those titles are bad, but they aren't supposed to be the your main titles of significance on a platform; they're supposed to be supporting titles for your big sellers.
Some of Sony's main development teams are openly dismissive of the Vita. And at least Nintendo did a Nintendo Direct when they found out Wii U sales were poor and showed off their future lineup. Sony didn't do enough to make their platform a success. All it's going to be in the future is a PS4 peripheral, and that's depressing considering how much thought was put into the console.
FlutterPuffs
Member
It's a much bigger news for a handheld that was flopping to have a large sales spike. As I said, Wii U would also get this much news if it was.
There are significantly less people buying the Vita on a price cut week than there are people buying a 3DS on a normal week.
I love my Vita and I absolutely LOVE Gran Turismo, but let's be honest: there's no way they can make it running on Vita (especially with PS3 online cross-play), at
stable
Unless they pull a GTPSP/Forza, going cheap on: number of opponents/IA/resolution/AA/reflections/particle effects/polycount/shadows...pretty much everything. If that's the case, not sure if want.
But yeah it will surely sell well, at least in Europe.
GhostTrick
Banned
In terms of multiplier, sure Vita has seen a huge spike... But those numbers remains low IMO. If those keep staying that high, then sure it's perfect... But I doubt they will. And 62k with price drop + new color + 2 new releases feels a bit... Mediocre.
DiscoJer
Member
Well, some people play racing games just for the racing. I don't expect Gran Turismo on the Vita to look as good as the PS3 version, I just want to play it on the Vita.
Hell, I'd take a straight port of GT4
Glass Rebel
Member
That's my take as well. 62k as a baseline would be pretty good but it'll have a hard time maintaining it. With Soul Sacrifice, Tales and God Eater coming up it might get a good 20-30k base though. The real issue is, what comes after that?
Square Enix has FFX-HD coming still, and yes, if Sony doesn't have a GT Vita lined up for the very near future (within the next 12 months) they're utter fools.
"Next six months" is a vague time frame to choose and chops off the holidays. Tearaway is also supposed to make it out by the end of the year.
Also, note your choice of the phrase "retail titles". The Vita is not tied to retail, and we have comments from management within the industry claiming that the Vita is much stronger on digital distribution than any other platform in a retail:digital ratio. Given that digital distro has lower overhead and higher profits this is clearly a plus with regards to it getting 3rd party support.
It is also why that release list massively explodes when you include digital distro titles like:
Frozen Synapse
Binding of Isaac
Hotline Miami
Abe's Oddyssee New n Tasty
Guacamelee!
Velocity Ultra
Kickbeat
Bit.Trip Runner 2
Rainbow Moon
And these are just the ones I could think of off the top of my head. The Vita doesn't need retail to deliver games, and in fact most of it's strongest titles avoid retail entirely. The only threat here is retailers not carrying the system itself if retail software sales are too weak, but then they aren't that bad, peripheral sales are always the high profit items for everyone involved, and big box stores and online retailers carry many break even hardware devices with no software at all attached. Add that the PS4 compatibility will allow Sony to push retailers to tie the PSV and PS4 retail spaces together and you have a solid foothold in retail for the hardware for at least the next several years.
During that time Sony can continue their focus on digital distro with the Vita and likely parlay many of the indie bridges they're trying to build with PS4 into additional Vita support.
Paper Mario isn't bigger than SS or KZ for the Vita's target demographic. Sony isn't trying to win the 4-12 age group or Nintendo fans over with the Vita. They're looking to service their traditional 15-30 age core gamer demographic with a handheld. Those people by and large don't care about Paper Mario. They like MonHun in Japan and shooters in the west. SS is meant to appeal to the former, KZ appeals to the later.
Again, the major titles aren't. Cross play is currently being used by Sony to entice 3rd parties onto the system's small user base, same with allowing PSP up-ports. The major IPs Sony is bringing (your main complaint here is after all their support) are exclusives. SS, KZ, Tearaway for this year in particular and probably more at GDC/E3/TGS.
Do I think games like Sly 4 and Ratchet & Clank: FFA should have been Vita exclusives? Sure. But then Sony sent those out to 2nd parties who actually get nice bumps from having their games sell as many copies as possible and neither was destined for great sales to begin with. It's entirely likely the only way funding them made any financial sense was to be cross play.
Nintendo is trying to carve out their own media walled garden, just like they do with all their relationships with their consumers. Walled gardens are safe and controllable, that is why Nintendo does Nintendo Direct.
Sony will likely continue to address the future of the Vita at major industry trade shows like they have previously. If nothing worthwhile is shown at GDC/E3/TGS then you'll have a point, but so far Sony has brought something of worth to every major trade show since the Vita has been alive.
I'd say it's a bit early to make that leap of faith. It's barely into year two of it's life. If the price drop and some year 2 software result in even a little hardware sales momentum Sony can definitely slow burn the Vita into a healthy market for software. It has already had some nice sales comments form major 3rd party publishers (Ubisoft on AC3:L) and indie devs (RCR developer) alike. That is the first step towards more meaningful results. Will it ever be a powerhouse console? Probably not unless it catches it's own exclusive Puzzles & Dragons/Pokemon/MonHun phenomenon in Japan. But it can still move 25-30M units of hardware over the next 5-6 years and be a profitable device for Sony and the publishers/developers who service that install base.
klapauzius
Banned
Pricedrop + Phantasy Star only generates + 50000 sales. This is not much, lets see the next week sales.
You could have said the same thing for the Gamecube during the PS2's dominance. Pretty sure Nintendo still made money on it.
You could also likely find many PSP price cut weeks where the NDS still outsold it. The PSP still ended in a healthy position.
And you could even likely find many weeks early in the Wii's life where the PS3 and X360 saw price cuts and the Wii still outsold them. Doesn't change the fact that both consoles have now greatly reduced the gap in hardware sales with the Wii as it's stalled over the last several years.
Meeting the standards of the market leader at your peaks isn't required to be a viable product. Meeting a number that results in a profitable business model does. We don't know what Sony's model is for that, but we do know that the Vita was sold at or very close to cost when it first came out (not at a significant loss), and that it has exhibited better than expected retail + digital tie ratios globally. So if Sony's model afforded any ground for downward scaling and still being profitable the Vita is likely doing exactly what it needs to do (slowly building an install base one price cut and meaningful release at a time).
ChackanKun
Member
Sony needs to stop making ports or new titles of existing franchises.
If you have Killzone on the PS3 why the hell would you prefer playing it on the Vita?
They need to start doing new franchises more appealing on a portable.
Sony has so many internal studios...Team Siren could make a new horror type game, Insomniac a platform, ND some kind of adventure game (even if Uncharted Vita is already out), etc, etc! Games that you CAN'T play anywhere else!
Work more on the features of the Vita: 3G online and/or Wifi online, the back touchpad and the touch screen.
Also, seeing as the iPhone is ruling the world mainly because of the App Store...more stuff on the PSN Store. Little, quick, cheap games! Give some freebies weekly or monthly!
Edit: I ALWAYS loved portable gaming, ever since my GameGear. When Sony launched the PSP I was buying it day freaking one and I loved it until I had to sell it (money issues) last year. Sony made some good decisions, bad decisions, and ignore some huge ones. If the Vita started doing better and receiving better and exclusive games, I would buy one.
If you have Killzone on the PS3 why the hell would you prefer playing it on the Vita?
They need to start doing new franchises more appealing on a portable.
Sony has so many internal studios...Team Siren could make a new horror type game, Insomniac a platform, ND some kind of adventure game (even if Uncharted Vita is already out), etc, etc! Games that you CAN'T play anywhere else!
Work more on the features of the Vita: 3G online and/or Wifi online, the back touchpad and the touch screen.
Also, seeing as the iPhone is ruling the world mainly because of the App Store...more stuff on the PSN Store. Little, quick, cheap games! Give some freebies weekly or monthly!
Edit: I ALWAYS loved portable gaming, ever since my GameGear. When Sony launched the PSP I was buying it day freaking one and I loved it until I had to sell it (money issues) last year. Sony made some good decisions, bad decisions, and ignore some huge ones. If the Vita started doing better and receiving better and exclusive games, I would buy one.
Indeed, MH is all they needed for Japan anyway, but they decided to be ballsy and go for other games of the same genre instead.
My main issue with the Vita being a success is this: the 3DS' second lowest week ever was two weeks before its pricecut in Japan, at 15,819 units according to Famitsu. The Vita has outsold that mark 11 times out of the 63 weeks that it has been around. It's not that the Vita's not living up to standards of the 3DS, it's that it's been completely outclassed by not only the 3DS, but by the Dreamcast, which also had a much higher software tie ratio than the Vita (its biggest selling title is less than 250,000 units in Japan). To put this in perspective, the Wonderswan, a niche console that the Vita is tracking closer to than the Dreamcast at this point in its life, had its biggest title (a Final Fantasy I port) at 376,367 units. The Gamecube had a million seller. The Dreamcast had something around 400,000. If Sony wanted/wants to save the Vita, they'll put out Gran Turismo, but it's going to be buried underneath the launch of the PS4/Durango (in America/Europe), the Wii U's holiday lineup, and the 3DS lineup.
I like the Vita. It's a good console, and I'm happy that its getting tons of indie support recently. But that doesn't change the fact that FFX HD isn't going to do anything of major significance when you can play the same title on the PS3, and Squeenix has been extremely slow at trying to get the title out. I hope Sony does put Gran Turismo along with a price cut to at least try to spur sales, but I have serious doubts about the future of the console.
Probably not.
bigboss370
Member
I'd probably buy a Vita if they had a price drop here too, mostly because of PS4 remote play.
this type of attitude pisses me off. what is wrong with you? maybe it would make sense if you had actual problems with the hardware, but as a gaming enthusiast I can't understand why you wouldn't be excited for the platform to succeed. the increased sales is a great sign which will hopefully lead to more games and even more sales. now good news is still bad news? you can't have sales without games, but you can't have games without sales either.
at least I can appreciate that the hardware pushes handheld gaming forward as a medium, because it sets a bar for what's capable on a handhelds.
this type of attitude pisses me off. what is wrong with you? maybe it would make sense if you had actual problems with the hardware, but as a gaming enthusiast I can't understand why you wouldn't be excited for the platform to succeed. the increased sales is a great sign which will hopefully lead to more games and even more sales. now good news is still bad news? you can't have sales without games, but you can't have games without sales either.
at least I can appreciate that the hardware pushes handheld gaming forward as a medium, because it sets a bar for what's capable on a handhelds.
We don't see eye to eye often on this subject but I can't see anything wrong with that.
it's still not a good sign that they didn't announce new titles during the feb events Sony held
Heh I totally forgot about the wonderswan...
Also Vita performing like the GC would be an absolute disaster for anyone involved not named Nintendo.
I mean GC was such a success that they did a U turn with the Wii and had to basically go back to the drawing board or they would have disappeared off the console scene.
Seriously GC was not a success by any metric.
electroplankton
Banned
Trust me, Animal Crossing's sales are really, really amazing. It's not that it's selling well; it's selling faster than any other game that debuted with less than one million units in the first week. It's facing continuing supply constraints week by week. Neither Nintendo had so many expectations, given that they wanted to ship just 200k units for the first week (and sold-outs confirmed this).
It is surprising because it's still pulling more than 70k units 4 months after the release. It's surprising because it's outselling Wild World by more than one million units (also considering eShop sales) in the same timeframe; and Wild World sales were really surprising at the time.
It's also surprising because we saw that, though successful, many 3DS games that came from DS craziness were not able to repeat those numbers, and some of them collapsed: NSMB2, Brain Training 3, Style Savvy; even Mario Kart 7 is not selling as good as DS was able to do, though it's quite close. That's also why New Leaf sales are surprising, and are more remarkable than Vita sales spike this week, where the platform had interesting release, a price cut, bundle, a new color.
Then, one may not follow Japanese sales, and indeed that article is probably written by someone who just did not care so much about the topic.
Because does someone care about Vita among the "typical gamgin website audiences"?
It is if: you don't follow Japanese sales (and so you're not much informed, hence why writing an article on something you don't know about...?), because otherwise this increase was predictable given the circumstances (a much bigger news would have been the Vita sales increase in the first week of the year, with no games, no price-cut, no new colours, no bundles). And I just remarked the tone is not exactly professional.
It's literally the title of the article in question. It's also close enough to objectively correct that we're fine with it.
Yes, it's "only" 66k units sold, which doesn't even best the 3DS in the Vita's price cut week. But it's also a 500% increase in sales week over week.
A 500% increase in sales is close enough to "massive" that we aren't all that worried about it. I do not believe we particularly harsh on Nintendo/Microsoft or particularly soft on Sony threads.
Rawket Lawnchair
Member
Hopefully this will continue, it will be a shame for the industry if the Vita fails.
Dude. This Vita sales spike is more notable and more interesting than AC's continued high sales to most people. We saw that with the 'buzz' in the Media Create thread here on GAF. It's no surprise that an outlet that writes about games and gaming saw fit to write an article about the 'massive spike'.
michaelius
Banned
electroplankton
Banned
That was just an example.
Another one, that I already wrote but probably you missed: the spike Vita had after the holiday season was more remarkable. It did 33k units with no games, no bundle, no colours.
I am not trying to defend the VITA numbers but should we take account that the system was out of stock in some stores with the price cut?There were reports for this.Amazon also was having stock problems.I believe that colours like red,blue and silver are still out of stock in Amazon.
To tell the truth I wouldn't call that a massive spike [knowing the japanese market size/dynamics] but it's indeed a big spike for Vita low [sales] standards.
While I do largely agree with your post, percentage isn't a good indicator for a "huge spike".
Speaking of percentage I wouldn't know how to call a 4800% jump
electroplankton
Banned
Maybe.
This will be evident in the next weeks, I think. But how much stock a platform selling 10K units per week on average would have, honestly? I can see stock issues in this case, but nothing highly relevant, e.g. without stock issues it would have sold something like 65k instead of 60k, imo.
Bigger numbers make for a bigger headline though.
There was more of a buzz when people thought the increase might actually be much larger than this, and so potentially predictive of something sustainable.
electroplankton
Banned
Indeed, that's exactly my point. People just looked at the raw numbers, without any context. With all the promotion, price-cuts, games, bundles and the like, 60k Vita are not that surprising. 33k without any of those were more remarkable.
PatientRain
Member
Honestly, thank god. Maybe this will lead to a broader price drop - and maybe that will bolster the system. I really want the Vita to thrive; it's a great piece of kit, and could use some great games.
I don't really see how 120k would point to any more sustainability than 60k does. It's either going to drop like a rock back to 10k or (hopefully) hit a slightly higher baseline, figures for one week can't conclusively point to either. Hell, we won't know even know about sustainability next week because the numbers will be inflated due to Soul Sacrifice and sold-out retailers restocking the new colours. Regardless, Vita was definitely the topic that generated most interest last week and has generated the most interest since. I'd be surprised if gaming sites hadn't commented on the sales.
massive spike refers to how the sale graph looks, not absolute numbers. Its a relative descriptor, and perfectly accurate.
Guerilla Games, Evolution, Media Molecule, San Diego, Japan Studios, are all 'top studios', wich is or have been involved in Vita game-developement. :-/
As for Santa Monica (I assume you meant these people, not Sucker Punch) and Naughty Dog they have so far collaborated with other studios, like Bend (U:GA), Fun Bits (Escape Plan), Queesy Games (Sound Shapes), Blupoint (PSA:BR) on Vita-games+ports.
And just because they don't say a Santa Monica/Naughty Dog game, dosn't mean you don't see their work.
The end-results of those games have been rather good quality on the Vita.
I'm sure that the people running SCEWWS has some sort of strategy, for making the games on PS3/PSV and PS4, as good as they can. If Yoshida suddenly decided to have Naughty Dog make all the games from Sony from now on, I doubt the games would have been better.
it's possible this price drop is Sony's last ditch effort to save the Vita, with the idea that the price drop could help Soul Sacrifice become a huge system seller. no other Vita game that we know of will have this same potential, so the timing was right.
and if SS is only a modest success it should still replace much of the money lost/not gained from hardware sales now that the price has been lowered.
and if SS is only a modest success it should still replace much of the money lost/not gained from hardware sales now that the price has been lowered.
You write really good posts.
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