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Vita Sales Hold Steady at 10K in Japan, Slips to 35K in US
It’s interesting to compare the sales trends of hardware in America and Japan. For instance, Japanese gamers don’t have any interest in the Xbox 360. It sells like whatever the opposite of hotcakes are. For instance, in the week ending March 11, Japanese sales-tracker Media Create (data posted in the NeoGAF forums), the Xbox 360 came in at dead last, moving a paltry 1,290 units. On the flipside, according to VGChartz, the western tracking site (of sometimes questionable reliability), the 360 came in number one, having sold 62,593 units in the week ending March 10.
But there seems to be one thing that both the US and Japan can agree on when it comes to what system to buy from week to week: the PlayStation Vita is the fourth-most interesting.
In Japan, Vita sales are holding steady right above ten-grand, having sold 10,041 units last week, a marginal improvement from their 10,023 showing the week before. In the US, only a few weeks after its global launch, the Vita hung in number four for the second straight week, moving 35,723 units. The prior week, the site reports that the Vita managed to sell 50,798, meaning that last week’s sales were a decline of 30 percent. That’s not so terrible when you consider that every system’s sales slid from the previous week to last week, but the Vita’s downturn is also by the highest degree.
What does all this mean? It means that, in February and March, people just aren’t buying new, expensive systems. Even the iPad had the good sense to launch around late March, early April the last few go-rounds. It seems to me that, at least as far as US sales are concerned, the first few months after Christmas are not ideal for spending a shit-ton of cash on a shiny new gadget. Maybe Sony wanted to try and steal Apple’s thunder because they knew an upgraded iPad was around the corner…but clearly that didn’t work.
Maybe as time goes on, Sony will release some more killer software that sets gamers’ hearts a-flutter. But until then, or a price drop, expect to see the Vita’s sales stay flat.
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Once Sony releases the PSOne games and the rest of the PSP games on the Vita’s PSN then sales will start going up a bit. I don’t think Sony will do a price drop, like the 3DS did, anytime soon even with lower than expected sales. Similar to the 3DS, the Vita came out at an akward time of the year and will probably increase in sales in the summer.
Ridcously Overpriced custom memory that you will need. 32gb for £80, WHAT!!!!!!!
Battery life when playing a game like Uncharted is useless for travelling.
Overpriced games.
Dosen’t offer enough extra features to convince most people to part with their 3ds, PSP or Android phone.