Where the 3DS saw record sales during the Christmas week, the PlayStation Vita’s numbers dropped significantly during the same week in Japan selling approximately 72,479 units compared to its 324,859 units sold in the previous week.
That’s a whopping decrease of 78 percent.
The dip in sales for Sony’s portable devices (the PSP and Vita) are most likely in part due to the rise of gaming on mobile devices, iOS and Android. “There will always be a large and significant market for dedicated portable gaming, but we do believe it is a shrinking category that will eventually plateau to a sustainable market size for at least two competitors,” Jesse Divnich, EEDAR Vice President of Capital Research and Communications, told VentureBeat.
The retail price of the Vita also might be a cause of poor sales, especially when compared to the 3DS, which was reduced in price to $169 back in August because of initial lackluster sales.
Sony is standing firm, though. “We have a very good product at a very affordable price,” Kazuo Hirai, Sony President of Consumer & Products Services, told Bloomberg earlier this year. “There’s no need to lower the price just because somebody else that happens to be in the video game industry decided they were going to.”
Source: VentureBeat