Sony covers up poor PlayStation Vita Sales – Video Games Update
Jack Tretton, the CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA), has stated that he finds PlayStation Vita (PS Vita) and PlayStation Portable (PSP) sales to be ‘acceptable’.
Ever since the launch of the PlayStation Vita in December 2011, Sony has been losing a lot of money and despite the company’s efforts, sales for the handheld just aren’t picking up. The two main reasons why the handheld is doing so poorly in the market are
the high cost of the device and the lack of interesting games.
The PS Vita is available for the price of $249.99. Now this might be reasonably lower than the cost of the latest Smart Phones, but Sony has not taken into account that the current consoles are available at the same price or lower.
The fact that the PS Vitas’ current game library consists of ports and spin-offs of console games means that gamers would rather just buy a console instead and look towards the Nintendo 3DS for their handheld fix.
"In this industry, you can't get too high or too low, because it moves very quickly, I think there's an acceptable number - and [the number] we've sold: That's acceptable. If it was triple that, I'd be happier. If it was one-third, I'd be disappointed. Anything
with great rewards is going to come with great challenges. We felt if the tech was there, and the game support was there, then the audience would be there. … I feel much better about it now than I did four months ago,” stated Tretton in an interview with GamesIndustry
International.
Because of the continuous disappointing sales figures for the PS Vita throughout the year, Sony has decided to group the PSP and PS Vita sales together to form ‘handheld division sales’ which look much more presentable on the Balance Sheet.
A sly move by Sony, but it doesn’t hide the fact that this year second quarter (Q2) sales for the PSP and the PS Vita combined were only 1.4 million units when compared to the 1.8 million units for just the PSP in the last years Q2. This leads gamers to
question just how badly the PS Vita is really doing and is Sony planning to announce a major price drop for the handheld to push the holiday sales?
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