Despite being an absolutely fantastic piece of hardware, the PlayStation Vita hasn’t exactly been lighting up the sales charts. Take Black Friday, for example; the DS outsold the Vita by over 100,000 units. Not the 3DS, the DS.
So what should Sony do? Industry analyst Billy Pidgeon has the answer: follow Nintendo’s lead.
Speaking with NowGamer , Pidgeon gave Sony some advice: “Although the hardware is high quality, Sony may need to follow Nintendo’s lead and cut price drastically next year if the installed base remains below five million or the platform will not be viable for publishers.” If you may recall, the 3DS’ initial sales figures weren’t lighting it up, either. So Nintendo cut the price and consumer reception has warmed up. But that’s not the only piece of advice Pidgeon has for Sony.
“Also the proprietary memory cards for PS Vita are prohibitively expensive. There should be more downloadable software, including inexpensive or free games, and these must be higher quality than popular iOS and Android games. It would in fact be helpful if the best and most popular smartphone and tablet games were also available for download to PS Vita.”
The Vita is a system that wants to thrive on a downloadable games catalog. They’ve recently added the Instant Games Collection to PlayStation Plus members that own a Vita. But with the largest Vita SD card, 32 GB, running a $100 price tag , an already somewhat pricey handheld gets even pricier.
Pidgeon mentioned that the software is finally headed in the right direction for the Vita, pointing at games such as Persona 4 Golden and Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation. However, he still thinks a price cut is needed for the system to remain viable.