Ready? Fight!

cnet.com

February is coming! And the Playstation Vita will be put face to face with the Nintendo 3DS in the market, its closest competitor.

Why closest? Well, both devices offer games in the dedicated level, and put together the greatest game makers, publishers and franchises. I can't think of any other devices that offers that level of gaming other than the PSVita and 3DS.

This blog is going to cover both sides of the ring, I'll talk about 3DS current and past situations and Vita's current situation in Japan as well as a preview of how it might perform in America and Europe.

Back in 2011 in Japan, the 3DS launched in 24 February selling almost all the units available in the first day, approximately 370.000 units (400.000 were shipped) which was a very successful launch. But then the sales numbers dropped quickly, not only in Japan but in all regions after their respective launch days, and way bellow Nintendo's expectations. Due to the lack of best-selling franchises and salty price Nintendo had to take drastic measures.

After the launch of Zelda: Ocarina Of time 3D and Star Fox 64 3D the situation didn't change, the company then slashed the 3DS price by 30%, going down from $250 to $170 (USD).

And announcements of Nintendo's strongest franchises only helped to create a bigger momentum:

Sales started to pick up reaching 1st in weekly sales figures many times and in several regions, whats better: All by itself, without any great software launch. In Japan the 3DS had the same price of the Nintendo DS, it literally killed its predecessor in Japan but reached very good weekly numbers selling as much as 80.000+ per Week, and even 100.000 with some good software coming and new hardware colors

Nintendo also prepared a great software line-up for 2011's holidays, and Sony was preparing an amazing list of software for Vita's holiday launch in Japan, among them Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Little Big Planet, Wipeout, Dynasty Warriors Next and many others.

At that time the 3DS reached amazing numbers, and the Playstation Vita did a decent launch selling 320.000 units in its first week (in plain holiday season) but right after it underperformed terribly selling only 70.000 in its 2nd week, going down to less than 30.000 units in its 4th week.

"Since launch, weekly Vita sales have come in at 324,859 units, 72,479, 42,648, 42,915, 18,361 and now around 14,000"

Here are the detailed Sales number for 2011's holiday season in Japan

Click/Tap to Zoom-in

VGChartz.com

I'm aware that VGChartz doesn't have perfect tracking numbers but any number is perfect, and to be honest i think its the closest we can get for free in the internet.

As you can see, the Playstation Vita not only sold less than the 3DS in its launch, its sales dropped faster and lower than the 3DS (reaching as low as 14.000 units last week), but it also had a infinitely better software library and the worst of all: It launched in the holiday season.

This can be explained by many factors:

* Maybe the 3DS was already eating the bigger part of the market taking in consideration its strong softwares in Japan (Monster Hunter 3G, Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D land) and left a small spare market for the Playstation Vita to pick.

* Japan Consumers weren't interested in the Playstation Vita and its games

* Or were driven away by its expensive price compared to the 3DS and the expensive Sony proprietary memory cards (8gb costing as much as $45 USD in japan), which are needed to play some games like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, and download titles.

The problem is not only hardware, software has barely reached the top 50 in Japan recently (not even launch day), and the only title to reach 100.000 units until now was Hot Shots Golf 6. In the other hand the 3DS had many titles in top 20 and 3 in top 10 for the whole holiday season in Japan, Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D land leading selling more than 150.000 units per week.

Based on all this data, its pretty obvious Sony is in a bigger trouble than Nintendo was when the 3DS was underperforming its expectations, and Sony can not take a drastic measure like Nintendo's huge 3DS price cut, because the 3DS was overpriced (now selling at loss), and the PSVita is already selling at loss. Sony expects to get profit out of it in 3 years, Nintendo (after the price cut) recently stated that the Nintendo 3DS will be profitable this year, which is less than 2 years after the Japanese launch.

What happened with PSVita's Japanese launch?

Sony themselves stated that the available software was indeed not appealing enough to the Japanese public, and is more appealing to the Western and European public. Which i kind of agree judging by PSVita's Uncharted terrible sales, and it is a best-selling franchise.

Its very hard to predict what will happen when Sony's new handheld becomes available in America and Europe, I'm pretty sure it will do better than it did in Japan but the post-launch is nearly unpredictable. But I really doubt it will surpass 3DS sales both hardware and software wise.

I'm almost sure that Vita sales will not pick-up in Japan until a Monster Hunter game is released, until now there are no official announcements from Capcom that a Monster Hunter game is in the works for the PSVita, but Monster Hunter 4 is in the works for the 3DS and until now its an exclusive, however Sony has stated that a Monster Hunter game is to come:

""The games available at launch in Japan do not correspond to the typology of the Japanese public. It lacks a particular game, Monster Hunter, scheduled for the coming months,""

Philippe Cardone, CEO of PlayStation France in a interview with Le Point.

Like if this wasn't enough, Sony is being put under pressure to show PS3's successor as they stated there will be no home console reveal this E3 and Microsoft seems to have something in the sleeve...

But the competition is not going to be easy in 2012, Nintendo has amazing titles set to launch, and Sony so far has not made any solid announcements for the near future.

But whatever happens, i hope competitors never give up and remain strong no matter what. Because this is the perfect recipe for a healthy gaming market.

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So this Analysis has come to an end !

Thank you for reading, and it would be nice if you checked my last Analysis about this same market, it was made in 22 Jul 2011, before the 3DS price cut, so you can check by yourselves how accurate it was.

<--- | 22 Jul 2011 | Analysis - The Future of: The Nintendo 3DS and Playstation Vita

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Calvin And Hobbes are Bill Watterson's