When that happens, the Vita will have lost its share of the market almost entirely. There had been a shocking report of the Vita's removal of support from Jack Of All Controllers that Sony had already set a date of early , citing a report from indie developer Suzaku on their Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story Kickstarter page.
According to Push Square , it seems that was a case of jumping to conclusions. It just depends on how long indie gamers keep playing on it.
Forza Horizon 5 addresses you by the name on your Microsoft account, but for some trans players, that has unexpected consequences. Trophy tracking websites tell us that thousands more players have played the games on Vita digitally as well.
For a small team like us those thousands of additional sales of each game make a big difference. Johnson says he's working with Sony with a view to releasing another title for Vita, a non-violent arcade game called Forest Guardian.
To understand why Vita attracted such a die-hard fan base - without AAA support - let's go back and look at the history. Following the moderate success of 's handheld PlayStation Portable PSP , and Nintendo's major success with its Nintendo DS, Sony wanted to make a mark in the handheld space with the most impressively specced machine on the market. Reviews at the time were positive. IGN called it "easily the most versatile handheld available," adding that it was "an amazing piece of hardware with an impressive launch lineup and software that hints toward a bright future.
The comments turned out to be prescient. High prices resulted in slow sales. According to Sony's financial reports , Vita sold 1. In the corresponding period only a year earlier, the aging - but cheaper - PSP had sold 1. Sony downgraded sales forecasts and turned its attention to the forthcoming PlayStation 4.
Media Molecule's highly-regarded Tearaway was the last original game made specifically for Vita by a Sony-owned studio, although ports of games like MLB and God of War continued to be released, mainly as downloads-only. By , Sony senior vice president Masayasu Ito was openly directing first-party studios to ditch Vita and focus on PlayStation 4. Vita still attracted the odd gem, like Tearaway, which made clever use of the machine's back touchpad and touchscreen.
Velocity 2X from Futurlab exploited the console's ability to handle fast-paced, busy-screen arcade action. Persona 4 Golden boosted Vita's sales, at least for a short while. But the decline had set in. Sony targeted sales of 10 million units within the first year of full launch, but analysts estimated its sales were only half that, with subsequent annual sales declining steadily.
According to sources, Sony all-but ceased pitching developers and publishers to release new games. Then Sony employee and Vita enthusiast Shahid Ahmad decided something ought to be done. He had a very specific vision for Vita. At the time of Vita's development and launch, Ahmad was working as a special projects manager for PlayStation, drumming up developer support in India. Although his efforts were successful, he knew he was operating at the margins.
These projects were also on the periphery, but they brought him into close contact with lots of independent developers. In an attempt to boost developer interest in all PlayStation mobile gaming platforms, which now included Vita, Ahmad visited the Game Developer Conference in He started hanging out with indie developers, many of whom were enjoying success on Steam. He found that developers did not trust console manufacturers, did not want to work inside their closed systems and rigorous procedures.
They were thriving on Steam. And I said, we are losing the next generation, this machine is going to die. We have to do open heart surgery now. He showed them a chart listing the games due out for Vita in There were just 13 games on the list. He pitched them his idea: to invest in indies, and to spend hard cash on persuading them to make games for Vita, or to port their best games. He told them that stringent approval policies needed to be relaxed.
This was bigger than the success or failure of Vita, he argued; their efforts now would affect the future of PlayStation as a whole. By the time he was done with his first round of pitches to indies, he had signed 55 more games to Vita. It didn't save the handheld from commercial failure - at that point, nothing could - but it gave people a reason to keep playing, and it bound the PlayStation identity closer to indies than ever before.
Ahmad, alongside fellow developer relations executive Adam Boyes, went out on the road, persuading developers to work on Vita games, connecting devs with second-party companies with technical Vita experience, and picking up the tab. Everyone knew that we were trying to get independent developers on board and that PlayStation is now a much more friendly place for developers.
The whole thing just built up an awful lot of steam. If you'll pardon the expression. We don't have access to exact figures, but it's very obvious that they aren't close to that number. We do know the handheld sold just 2. In the six months since, Vita has had its worst sales yet, and seems to have added only a few hundred thousand sales during the holiday shopping season. To top it all off, it is often outsold week on week by its 7-year-old predecessor PSP — roughly the equivalent of the iPhone 5 getting outsold by the iPod Mini.
This week, Sony finally slashed the price of Vita — by a lot. The Wi-Fi-only model was dropped from 25, yen to the same 20, yen price point. We expect they're clearing out the 3G model — does anyone really need 3G on their Vita? At this price, Vita is still more expensive than the most expensive model of 3DS. We expect a similar price drop for the U. Looking ahead to , the current U. Most of Vita's games will be launching simultaneously on the PS3 as well.
The three games that are coming out are pretty interesting: Tearaway, Soul Sacrifice , and Killzone Mercenary all look like high-quality titles, but gamers can smell a weak platform.
There will likely be more announced tomorrow and later in the year, but this is a crucial time when Sony needs to be building excitement rather than letting it wither.
In the online presentation that Sony's Japanese branch gave to announce the Vita's price drop, it didn't announce any exciting new software. The biggest announcement was that Square Enix is still working on the Vita remake of Final Fantasy X that it announced in Game consoles are a long-term investment, and customers get wary when the sales start dropping and the release list gets thin.
It creates worry that the console won't be widely supported in the future. They need higher sales to convince developers to create games for the platform, but they can't stimulate sales without those games.
0コメント