What? No. Nintendo never followed the loss leading model of Sony.
Why the hell do you think they always go affordable hardware first to begin with?
Sony tried the very same model that proved a failure for the PSP and got what they deserved.
At least games were selling decently on the GC, that's not even happening on Vita!
1. Ubisoft seems to be happy with the sales of AC3:L, and CoD outsold it at retail so games selling decently on GC but not on Vita sounds like a fallacy.
2. I didn't say Nintendo followed Sony's loss leading model (though they have since walked themselves into that with both 3DS and Wii U in short order, hence their posting losses of late). I said Sony copied Nintendo's model for the Gamecube. Worst case scenario it could be a slow burn without running tons of red ink.
3. The PSP sold over 70M units. by your standards both the X360 and PS3 are failures. I don't think MS feels like they "failed" last generation.
4. Sony hasn't followed the PSP model at all as they have a much more profitable hardware model to open the system with and digital distro day one to further increase margins on software.
They need to sell something first to make any money at all, and that´s not really happening.
For most products you don't need to sell much more than a million to reach that point, FYI, including consumer electronics.
Otherwise companies like ATi and Nvidia who rarely sell more than a few million of any single product line would have a pretty hard time surviving, now wouldn't they?
It's all about economies of scale. A few million units sold looks bad from a market penetration standpoint, but from a manufacturing standpoint it's better than what many consumer electronics products ever achieve.
Fundamentally, I don't think there's any reason for the Vita to really exist. The entire reason for the parity between the PSP and the DS was that there were experiences that the PSP could provide that the DS couldn't, and that was a satisfying 3D experience. The rise of Monster Hunter only cemented the PSP as a competent competitor to the DS, and Monster Hunter provided the sales that allowed other third parties to sell on the PSP.
Now the 3DS can do everything the PSP can do, so what's left for the Vita?
It has a comparable power gap between it and the 3DS as the PSP did over the NDS. Add dual analog sticks that actually work and you have a recipe for a lot of game play experiences you can't find on the 3DS.
This argument is like saying "why we got 360/PS3? Instead we could have all these games on Wii and be just fine!" because that's about the power gap.
Has it found its identity as an indie console?
Still TBD, Sony has only just recently put a bigger emphasis on this. We'll have to see if it pans out for them over the next year or so. It will largely depend on how many indies they can rope in.
As an otaku console? I'd say that it could, but what kind of market is there for that?
This doesn't seem to be Sony's focus at all, as they aren't actively trying to get the array of Japan only niche titles pushed stateside in a hurry.
Sony has never put out a console without major backing of third parties.
First time for everything and all that. Also, most 3rd parties weren't tripping over themselves to deliver new exclusives to the PS3 when it came out one year after the X360. It's major exclusive selling points were all Sony produced, most of them from new IPs on the system or ones people didn't care about prior to the significant step in first party quality Sony took last generation.
And all those first party titles you mention? It's like me saying the Wii U will be saved by Kirby or Star Fox. Hell, some of those titles are on par with Endless Ocean.
Nintendo software can't "save" Nintendo consoles. They're aimed at the demographic Nintendo already gets with the Wii U. Soul Sacrifice, KZ, GT, etc. could significantly help the Vita as they're aimed at the target audience Sony is not currently capturing with Vita.
They're good supporting titles, not something you bank your system on, as I've repeatedly mentioned.
So you've played Soul Sacrifice, Killzone: Mercs, and Tearaway and know that they're nothing more than "good supporting titles"?
Retailers care about retail space; where do you think the Vita is going to go when the PS4 and Durango launch this year? The market that the Vita is "going for", as you say, isn't satisfying to retailers.
I'd assume right next to the PS4 with a sign saying "PLAY YOUR PS4 GAMES ON VITA!"
That's kinda the big "get" sony wins for the Vita with PS4 streaming. It buys the Vita more respect at retail and probably a handful of sales. Retailers might in fact treat it as what you said, a PS4 peripheral, but that doesn't mean it is if Sony continues pushing compelling content onto it's digital storefront.
Indies are more significant than ever. But why, as a major company, would you decide to bank on indies as your main selling point?
If your device is a non-Nintendo handheld?
1. indies are the driving force in global handheld software sales now. Angry Birds shits from great heights on anything any of the traditional 3rd parties have done on handhelds in years. So the recognition that this smaller, more flexible cohort of developers might actually know more about handheld game design than the big traditional software houses isn't exactly a wrongheaded conclusion to wind up with.
2. they're available. The traditional powers that be all neatly aligned themselves behind Nintendo's banner before the Vita was even out, understanding that Nintendo hegemony was better for them to move overpriced, middling software in greater numbers than a split market that was already seeing contraction due to smartphones.
3. they're actively looking for new outlets that give them freedom in distribution, something the Vita was specifically built for (much like the PS4).
I'm not saying Sony built the Vita with indies in mind. I'm saying that Sony recognizes their failure in NOT building the Vita with indies in mind in the first place and are now righting that wrong by catering more to them than to the traditional 3rd parties.
You can't deny that the Vita has greatly undersold Sony's expectations. They were so embarassed by the console that they had to hide the Vita with the PSP in their sales reports and yet still had to keep cutting expectations. This wasn't their plan; their plan was to be another PSP, and it didn't work due to their own incompetence.
I'd agree that was their plan and also agree that it didn't work out. I wouldn't say it was due to incompetence though. What could Sony have legitimately done differently? MonHun was off the table the minute Nintendo offered Capcom a deal. Sony literally couldn't have paid Capcom enough money to go Vita exclusive again if they'd been given the chance, as Capcom obviously saw a path to sales growth instead of a status quo split handheld market with similar MonHun sales to last generation.
What else is there for traditional software that sells handhelds? Pokemon, pretty sure they couldn't land that.
Those major indie titles that you say would make an impact aren't coming. Japan, the greatest market for handhelds, is generally adverse to digital distribution, so it's not going to make much of an impact. They are cutting their losses in the West (why lose more money on something you don't have software for?). It's a failure of a console.
1. Japan, the region adverse to digital distro, spends $2M a day on digital microtransactions for a cell phone game. Every market is adverse to digital distro until it takes off, then it booms fast. Japan is likely on the verge of doing just that just like the U.S. and E.U. before it.
2. Binding of Isaac, Frozen Synapse, Hotline Miami, and Bit.Trip Runner 2 are all coming. That's a pretty solid start. MineCraft is MS exclusive for the time being but there have been hints towards mutual interest there, so we'll see. The transition to a digital distro indie scene is already well on it's way. The question now is how much Sony goes out of their way to promote it and land the "big guns".
Could it sell 20 million? Yes. If Sony keeps on doing what they're doing, and keeps putting out games that can be found on other consoles, along a few niche titles, it won't get close.
Again, a lot of Sony's upcoming titles are Vita only, so I don't see why you keep going back to the "on other consoles" excluse (also, Vita is not a console, its a handheld).
1. It would be nice if you would at least acknowledge that economy of scale is a concept that exists, even if you believe Vita is somehow immune to it.
I very much understand economy of scale, I don't think you get the real world implications of how it works though. A few million units of hardware is FANTASTIC for most products. The slow sales and therefore slow sell thru on Vita is likely why we're only seeing the price drop in Japan at the moment, due to missed sales expectations for Sony. That doesn't change the fact that as long as Vita keeps moving a few million units a year it will easily remain a non-loss producing product for Sony. Up until they have a more profitable product that demand some part of it's fabrication line (most likely the OLEDs).
2. The notion that Vita hardware was profitable or sold at cost at launch, stated as fact many times here and in other Vita-related threads, seems to be a gaming urban legend. Maybe it's true, but I can't find any statement from any Sony exec that confirms it, and I've looked.
Then you should have followed the Vita's history a bit better. Hirai had said when it was first shown that it would be sold at cost or at a slight loss for launch, which likely included R&D costs and fabrication ramp up fees. Since then we've had teardowns done by multiple sources that price the Vita's almost entirely off-the shelf parts at
$160. So if Sony viewed the R&D on Vita as sunk cost then the system is technically still profitable even post-price cut.
3. For someone who keeps comparing Vita to GC, you seem to be overlooking the sizable gap between the two platforms in terms of launch-aligned sales and major software releases. If it were really selling like GC hardware and had multiple guaranteed million-sellers announced for it, I'd be a lot less pessimistic about its prospects.
Well sure. I'm saying that at this point Sony can build it into a GC-level platform. Though I'm sure by the end of it's life cycle Uncharted:GA will have sold a million units. It was at 530K the start of last June not counting digital distro sales (that for a title sold at a premium MSRP as well).
The GC had the benefit of Nintendo's built in software library, so we knew it's slow burn would be successful. My point is that Sony isn't losing any money here, only alleged opportunity cost that only exists if they were spending millions on marketing it (which they aren't) or taking teams off the PS4 to make Vita games (which they also aren't). Instead they primarily rely on word of mouth, trade shows and publications, and their second tier of developers they likely don't want to give an eight figure PS4 budget to but also know can continue to exist and make profit on the PSV for them with smaller seven figure budgets.
That is the similarity to GC. It's a life support system. Nintendo didn't have to contract first party studios because the GC was a gateway to enough software sales to prevent that. Sony can use the Vita to prevent similar in-house contraction of smaller studios (like Bend and Team Siren).
