24/7 Wall Street, a finance blog that rarely (if ever) addresses video games has just listed what they believe to be the worst product flops of 2012. Alongside Apple Maps from iOS 6 and the movie John Carter is the PlayStation Vita, reports Destructoid:
The author of the piece, Samuel Weigley, simply states the facts:
"Released first in Japan in December 2011 and then globally in February 2012, initial sales of the PlayStation Vita were encouraging. By the end of February, the company announced it had sold approximately 1.2 million units, followed by an additional 2 million units of software for the handheld game console. Yet sales quickly declined. From its release date to June 30, just 2.2 million PlayStation Vita units were sold, far less than the 3.6 million units Nintendo 3DS sold in just its first month. Recently, Sony has clumped sales of the Vita and its predecessor, the PSP, together to avoid highlighting embarrassing sales figures. Frequent complaints about the Vita were that the $300 price tag was too expensive and that its game lineup was both weak and small, especially given the availability of cheaper gaming through smartphones and tablets."
The above is something we've all heard before, and countless times, but from gaming news outlets. Often when we hear video games being addressed by other forms of press, it's often distorted or flat out wrong. But not here.
Perhaps the above should serve as a wake up call for Sony. No doubt they're well aware of all the complaints that has been leveled at their new handheld platform, and perhaps dismissed it as gamers being whiners as usual. And there's little denying: we are an impossible to please bunch.
But when an outside party points out every single fundamental problem that seasoned gamers have been saying since day one, it is truly damning. If this isn't enough to grab Sony's attention and make them reconsider their ways, it's hard to say if anything else will.
