It’s no secret that Playstation Vita hasn’t exactly set the world on fire, and today Sony announced that they’re cutting their estimated sales forecasts for the system for the third time in a year.
Sony originally hoped to sell 10 million Vitas before March. Following the system’s tepid reception at launch, Sony later started grouping Vita sales numbers in with the PSP (which is still popular in Japan,) in order to avoid posting the Vita’s embarrassing sales numbers publicly. Back in August, Sony announced that they still expected to sell 12 million Vitas and PSP’s by March, but today they revised those estimates once again, and now Sony says that they expect to sell 10 million PSP’s and Vita’s total by the end of the fiscal year.
Once again, Sony has stopped releasing sales data specific to the Vita in order to avoid making the situation look worse, but during its first six months on the market, the Vita only managed to sell 2.2 million units. To put that in comparison, the Wii U (which, by Nintendo’s own admission, has been selling slowly) has sold 3 million units in 3 months, and the 3DS, the Vita’s biggest competitor, has sold 30 million units in 2 years.
I still have no idea what Sony’s strategy with the Vita is: they’ve refused to give it a price cut, they barely dedicated any time to it during their press conference at the last E3, and with the upcoming unveiling of the PS4, I think the Vita will become even more neglected as everyone’s attention shifts toward the next-gen consoles. The Vita is a great piece of hardware with tons of potential and a couple of great games, but Sony seems intent on treating the future of the system like an afterthought. While Sony’s big press conference on Feb 20th will undoubtedly be focused on the PS4, I really hope they slip in a few announcements regarding new games or a price drop for the Vita, because they really need to do something — anything at this point — in order to keep the system alive.
