You speak as if Nintendo doesn't exist.If there is no successor, looks like I'll be playing my Vita for many more years to come especially if mobile is supposed to be the alternative
You speak as if Nintendo doesn't exist.
We don't know if NX will be successful.
We don't know if NX will be successful.
This makes me sad. I liked the hardware and some of the games. Sucks to see it go like this.
Now Nintendo won't have much motivation to improve on the 3ds. We will be stuck with terrible specced handhelds for the next few years.
This makes me sad. I liked the hardware and some of the games. Sucks to see it go like this.
Now Nintendo won't have much motivation to improve on the 3ds. We will be stuck with terrible specced handhelds for the next few years.
Would it be a waste of money if they rebrand and do another marketing push for vita? I don't think the specs are outdated, I don't see the need for a successor yet.
SCEE and SCEA never really put faith on the Vita but SCEJ did and they enjoyed moderate success. If these two had anything to do with it the Vita would never have existed.
Would it be a waste of money if they rebrand and do another marketing push for vita? I don't think the specs are outdated, I don't see the need for a successor yet.
Vita should have been a phone running Android.
It'd be a colossal waste of money. The Vita had its' chance, and it crashed & burned on the mass market. The appetite is not there, and has only diminished in the time since the device's release. Sony has factual proof that the US audience does not want the PlayStation Vita. They don't need another multi-million dollar marketing campaign to reinforce that data.
I really don't think Nintendo has really ever cared about competing spec wise with their competition in the handheld space. Every hardware generation there has been a more powerful handheld dedicated gaming device than Nintendo's, yet they've never been outsold in that space. As always, Nintendo will do their own thing.
This is incorrect, both in the detailed particulars and in the exceedingly wrong understanding of the state of the market.
All companies make decisions about what platform(s) to develop games for based on their projections of future success -- the profit to be obtained over the sales cycle of the title, and to a lesser degree of future titles made to follow up on it. All kinds of different factors go into this -- the current and projected install base of a platform, the expected type of audience, the development costs for that platform, the standard pricing of new titles, the penetration of digital sales, the ease of porting to other platforms -- and, yes, possible financial arrangements with platform-holders that can change the math on the release.
When Capcom was preparing to transition from PSP to a new generation, Monster Hunter was a 4 million selling franchise at the top of its popularity. By virtue of being a local co-op game, it had more platform restrictions than many other franchises -- it needed to be on a handheld, and (because players needed to be able to play with their local friends) it had to be exclusive at launch, so everyone would buy it on the same compatible platform. In thinking about where to develop future entries, they had to consider what options would be most likely to sustain the level of profitability those PSP entries were producing.
To begin with, that meant considering whether individual platforms could even support that level of sales. The 3DS seemed like a safe bet in that category -- it was almost guaranteed to be reasonably successful, and would have a large enough install base to sell millions of copies. It also had a very PSP-esque level of system power, which would mean similar development budgets, and since it's on the weaker end it could support off-ports in the future if they needed to pivot their strategy.
The Vita, on the other hand, was a very risky option -- a guaranteed failure in the West, an uncertain successor to the second-string handheld even in Japan, and powerful enough that meeting people's visual expectations would result in more expensive development and a reduced set of possible port destinations. Independent of anything Sony and Nintendo did themselves, the case for 3DS was pretty strong and many people had already seen the writing on the wall with Tri's release on Wii.
Now when you get into that scenario, Nintendo deciding to secure the franchise and possibly offer co-marketing or priority placement deals to do so would certainly sweeten the pot -- it could easily make it worthwhile to commit to an exclusive strategy rather than plan on a late port. But the degree to which it could be the sole determinant of their platform choice was limited. When we look at it in the opposite direction, even if they had chosen to it would have been basically impossible for Sony to pay Capcom to make MH exclusive to Vita -- their payment would have had to cover the potentially massive loss of sales for this title, the opportunity cost of potentially stunting the series' growth in the future, and the elimination of potential Western sales. The amount of money needed would be far in excess of any reasonable value Sony could get from it -- better to just publish some third-party game that could be a new hit with the same cash.
In short, simplifying these kinds of cases to "oh they got paid off!!!" is almost always a bad analysis; it's much more common (especially these days) for these types of deals to solidify a decision based on the fundamentals, and tip the scales in cases where platform selection is a crapshoot. In terms of the MH situation specifically, the idea that Capcom's choice was obviously wrong unless they got a giant moneyhat is completely unsupported.
With FM -- and this is the assumption people should generally make when any type of vague insider starts making tons of proclamations, but especially the ones that do it primarily to fan the fanboy flames -- he wasn't an insider by any definition himself, but instead someone brokering info from other people. What you wound up with was some mixture of info sourced from regional retail management, a few lower-end employees at publishers or platform-holders, some level of personal extrapolation and investigation, and then a dollop of exaggeration and bullshit.
When you break down the types of sources that typically feed these posters, it becomes clear that some types of "rumors" are more reliable than others. The existence of a title, even well before a public announcement, is often information available to people in retail, small regional branches, etc. and so it could be accurately leaked from numerous sources. That a game's platform was chosen "because it was paid for" is something that, even if strictly true, is information that would only be truly available to a small number of high-ranking employees -- almost anyone reporting on such a thing who doesn't have a direct and clear inside source is almost certainly feeding you a line.
Good for Nintendo I guess, no competitor left in the dedicated console handheld business.
Would it be a waste of money if they rebrand and do another marketing push for vita? I don't think the specs are outdated, I don't see the need for a successor yet.
An environment where Nintendo can have healthy competition with another platform would be a good sign that the market as a whole is healthy.
Nintendo is expanding to Mobile because the handheld market is disappearing.Good for Nintendo I guess, no competitor left in the dedicated console handheld business.
Except that for the handheld market, Nintendo's never had healthy competition with another platform besides last generation. Sony's the only one of Nintendo's handheld competitors to have actually made a successor handheld. The PlayStation Vita has sold better than all of Nintendo's handheld competitors except the PSP and the Game Gear. The PSP did so much better than any of the other handheld competitors to Nintendo that it outsold them all combined by a humongous extent including the Vita.
The bad sign for the handheld market is how badly Nintendo's doing.
I wouldn't say good for Nintendo at all. It's just more proof one of their bread and butter revenue streams is in deep shit because the market for dedicated handhelds is becoming non existent. It will only get worse.
An environment where Nintendo can have healthy competition with another platform would be a good sign that the market as a whole is healthy. This isn't the case anymore.
Yeah, the Nintendo 3DS which sold over 50000000 times says hello! It's Sonys incompetence that the PlayStation Vita was a fail, they praised it as a holy handheld platform and did not support it at all! And now they blame it on the mobile markest, it's really funny that allways something else is fault. It's Sony own fault because they did not support the Vita, they didn't even try to support it / thread! In my opinion Sony should never be allowed to make a new handheld before they not release at least 50 AAA games for the PlayStation Vita like they promised when they announced the PlayStation Vita!
Yeah, the Nintendo 3DS which sold over 50000000 times says hello! It's Sonys incompetence that the PlayStation Vita was a fail, they praised it as a holy handheld platform and did not support it at all! And now they blame it on the mobile markest, it's really funny that allways something else is fault. It's Sony own fault because they did not support the Vita, they didn't even try to support it / thread! In my opinion Sony should never be allowed to make a new handheld before they not release at least 50 AAA games for the PlayStation Vita like they promised when they announced the PlayStation Vita!
Yeah, the Nintendo 3DS which sold over 50000000 times says hello! It's Sonys incompetence that the PlayStation Vita was a fail, they praised it as a holy handheld platform and did not support it at all! And now they blame it on the mobile markest, it's really funny that allways something else is fault. It's Sony own fault because they did not support the Vita, they didn't even try to support it / thread! In my opinion Sony should never be allowed to make a new handheld before they not release at least 50 AAA games for the PlayStation Vita like they promised when they announced the PlayStation Vita!
Eh, the climate isnt that harsh, if you support the damn thing.
It does. Support will be even worse in the following years.
For sure. That's really what I'm trying to get across. It's not a good thing for Nintendo not to have healthy competition. That, combined with the fact that relatively speaking, the 3DS isn't doing as well as it should speaks volumes.
Good for Nintendo I guess, no competitor left in the dedicated console handheld business.
We would singing the same tune but like an octave or two higherIf Vita had 32GB or 64GB of internal storage, plus microSD card, we would be singing in a different tune right now.
This is a really limited vision of things:
1)handheld market is already disappearing, less handhelds means less exclusives and games in general, meaning less interest in the handheld market from both gamers and developers, so even without concurrents nintendo will have big problems, if you add that Nintendo isn't that successful in the home console market the future for nintendo is going to be hard
2)Vita is actually the junction ring between home consoles and handheld, once that vita will be gone many developers will shift to home consoles(especially those who make ps4/vita multis) and others to mobile, only some will shift from vita to the nintendo handheld.
3)the same applies to gamers, not every vita owner will buy the nintendo handheld.
Vita has a bigger role in the handheld market than people want to think, unlike what some nintendo fans think being the only handheld maker in this times means harder times for nintendo that has to fight the mobile market alone while trying to survive in the home console market.
1) Why less handhelds means less exclusives? The Vita developers made games only on Vita. Nintendo doesn't loose anything. Those developers might be tempted by Nintendo if it's the only choice now.
2) If Vita 2 were to exist, they would move there. Now they might go to Nintendo. How is it not a positive?
3) Yes but some will more easily now. Persona 6 on NX? Again only positives.
The shrinking handheld market is another subject entirely.
Sad, but expected. The Vita just can't survive while only catering to a niche market.
The climate is certainly different, though I don't think smartphones are the reason for the misfortune of the Vita. The 3ds has proven that there is still an audience for a dedicated handheld gaming device. I know everyone likes to spell doom for the 3ds because it can't pull in DS numbers, but that was impossible anyways. The casuals of the DS era are on smartphone or just not gaming at all anymore. What would make a better comparison is how the 3ds performs against the sales of the GBA. The market has just regressed back to pre Wii/DS era numbers.
Unless Nintendo totally flops with the design/price/games of their next handheld (like they almost did at the beginning of the 3ds cycle) then their next handheld will do fine.
Even Sony can bring out a Vita successor if they market and price the thing right, and get the games on it that people expected to be on the Vita. Though I do believe Sony should just stay focused on their bread and butter, console gaming.
1) Why less handhelds means less exclusives? The Vita developers made games only on Vita. Nintendo doesn't loose anything. Those developers might be tempted by Nintendo if it's the only choice now.
2) If Vita 2 were to exist, they would move there. Now they might go to Nintendo. How is it not a positive?
3) Yes but some will more easily now. Persona 6 on NX? Again only positives.
The shrinking handheld market is another subject entirely.
Memory Card Prices
Memory card prices are a big thorn in the side of the hardcore, but Im not sure they really dissuaded a large number of buyers in the mainstream. Sony basically subsidized the price of the Vita with the price of the memory cards; the price of the memory cards lowered the price of the Vita and therefore I feel this is largely had a counterbalancing effect. The hardcore are more interested in digital sales and carrying large libraries. I understand and appreciate that expensive memory cards are annoying and frustrating for the core, but I think its myopic to believe this had any real effect. I think it is far more likely this limited the Vitas ability to penetrate the hardcore audience (say a total demographic of 20 million gamers) than reach the mainstream. Were talking about the successor to a platform that sold 80+ million units. I do not believe this can be attributed to memory card prices.