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Post by Ex on Jan 26, 2024 15:28:54 GMT -5
In the land of ignorant gaijins; yes. In enlightened Nippon, no.
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Post by Sarge on Jan 30, 2024 15:36:43 GMT -5
Double dip, or just making sure they keep the price down a bit on the launch model - they want as many folks in at the start as they can. Both, actually. As for the Vita... man, if there was ever a platform I wanted to love that got shown so little support, it was that. It's like Sony just dumped it out there to die. And while it did better in Japan... it still didn't do great, not quite hitting 6M units. 3DS almost hit 25M. And the PSP before that did 20M. I recognize that mobile gaming cut into that market, but they really dropped the ball. It almost reminds me of Sega's bungling of the Saturn, except this time you also had stupidly expensive proprietary memory cards to go along for the ride.
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Post by Ex on Jan 30, 2024 21:41:29 GMT -5
I agree Sony could have handled the Vita better in the USA (it did well in Japan). But I still own nearly 100 physical Vita games and the vast majority are NTSC region. The Vita's got a great library for open minded gamers who enjoy a variety of genres. Or weebs.
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Post by Xeogred on Jan 30, 2024 22:18:36 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm always just joking with you guys on the Vita haha. Probably is a real cool piece of hardware. I remember the PSP seemed a bit ahead of its time as well. But I'm honestly not sure if I've ever seen a Vita in person... Two big foreign libraries for me to look into someday perhaps. I'm surprised a lot of those titles didn't get ports to the PS4 and such though. Nintendo would have been all over selling those games twice over for full price again!
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Post by Sarge on Jan 30, 2024 23:15:14 GMT -5
I don't think it did that well at all in Japan, comparatively. There was a falloff with the 3DS from like 35M to 25M, but the PSP went from 20M to shy of 6M, so even if it had some cool stuff and a bit more support in Japan, it seems it was a flop pretty much everywhere. But at least they tried a bit harder in Japan.
The one thing I really like about the system is that the hardware just feels really good to use. Tiny analog sticks aside, that d-pad is one of the best I've ever used. I wish that it had enough heft to handle all of the SNES library, because I'd legit use it more as an emulation device if it did. It's still fantastic for PSP and PSX games, and yeah, if I were more into all the weeb games, I'd find it heavenly, haha!
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Post by Ex on Jan 30, 2024 23:43:13 GMT -5
Somehow Sony made tiny analog sticks for the Vita that still hold up today. Yet the Switch's tiny analog sticks will implode if you sneeze on them too hard. And let's not forgot the original Vita debuted with an OLED screen, something Nintendo's still not gonna do with the Switch 2! Honestly the original OLED Vita is the sexiest handheld I've ever used. It just feels like the Ferrari of handhelds. Apparently the Vita sold about 10 million units worldwide, I think that's pretty good given it debuted during the ascent of the modern smartphone. And the Vita also had to compete with the 3DS! With such stiff competition, I think ~10 million unit sales ain't shabby.
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Post by Xeogred on Jan 30, 2024 23:47:37 GMT -5
Kind of weird to think, smart phones were probably blowing up around then and maybe part of the handheld competition? I'm not sure about Japan though, they were always ahead of us on phone tech and stuff for many years. Nintendo had a stronghold with that DS and maybe carried over to the DS.
EDIT: Ex beat me to it, yeah. I bet mobile gaming was a big bubble to push back against in the 2010's or whatever it was.
I guess some of you would know better than me as actual fans of some of these handhelds, but yeah to my eyes it looked like Sony just kind of abandoned the Vita ASAP when it wasn't doing too hot over here. Kind of a 90's SEGA hardware moment. "Not working, ah well what's next" lol...
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Post by Sarge on Jan 31, 2024 0:10:12 GMT -5
It had quite the precipitous drop, though - DS did over 150M, dropped to 75M with 3DS, but PSP had over 80M and dropped to over 15M worldwide. I'm sure that's why Sony elected not to do another system... which is really sad, because with proper support, I think the market might be able to bear it. Orrrrrr it could just be that the writing was on the wall, and a "grown-up" handheld wasn't going to sell like the 3DS, which had more to differentiate it from the mobile gaming space. And in light of that, while a failure, it probably did better than you'd expect.
I really do need to do a little more with my Vita, especially since I've got it hacked now.
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Post by Ex on Jan 31, 2024 0:14:54 GMT -5
looked like Sony just kind of abandoned the Vita ASAP I think if Sony had really abandoned the Vita, they wouldn't have released the 2.0 LCD version. Sony did believe in the Vita enough to give it a second chance. And they also released the Vita TV "console" as well, another nod to their faith in the product. Vita 1.0 OLED (I own one) Vita 2.0 LCD (I own one) Vita TV "console" (I don't own one) Unfortunately the closest thing we get from Sony these days is basically a glorified Wii U Gamepad.
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Post by Sarge on Jan 31, 2024 0:36:45 GMT -5
Well, the second Vita model was only a little more than a year after the original's release, so they clearly saw something wasn't working and were trying to salvage the situation. They definitely didn't stick it out as long as the PSP, but they did drop it like a hot potato after it was clear the new model and the PSTV weren't going to reverse their flagging fortunes. Kind of the opposite approach that Nintendo took with the Wii U, where they supported that system to the bitter end... which could have turned out very poorly if Switch hadn't turned into a smashing success and having that back catalog helped to keep the gaps filled.
I still think better memory card prices could have helped a lot, and I do wonder if some of the PSP's success was from ease of hacking, and given the Vita's prohibitive memory card costs, kept it from being as popular for that purpose. I don't remember when the SD2Vita cards dropped, but I feel like they weren't around for most of the system's life.
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