Hero of Hyrule
Frieren the Slayer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hello everyone, and welcome to Episode 2 of my series of threads covering hypothetical scenarios where we as a sales community, using the benefit of hindsight, try to salvage failed or troubled console launches. Episode 1 was exactly three weeks ago, when we discussed the troubled launch of the Wii U, and whether or not given the situation as it was at the time, there was any getting out of it. That question led to some very interesting discussions. If you are interested in reading those, or in adding your voice to the discussion, make sure to check it out here!
Which brings us to this new instalment, and this one will be covering... the PS Vita.
The PS Vita is an incredibly high profile failure, and probably, by most measures, the only true failure associated with the PlayStation brand. Sony's second (and last) dedicated handheld was a colossal failure on the market, selling a fraction of its predecessor's total numbers. It sold so poorly, in fact, that Sony outright stopped reporting numbers for it (the best we have are estimates that peg it at 13-15 million units, making it a Wii U level flop), and an alarmingly quick abandonment in the marketplace, not just by customers and many third parties, but by Sony themselves, who as a platform holder, and a first party publisher, publicly dissociated from the Vita as soon as was viable, and then exited the handheld sphere entirely.
The ripple effects of the Vita's market performance are felt to this day; Sony's direction as a platform holder and game maker shifted towards exclusively high end and premium experiences, eschewing the more experimental nature of their earlier platforms and software. Sony's market presence in Japan totally collapsed, and it has not been able to recover from that to this day. On the more positive side of things, the whole "console gaming on the go" conceit, as well as the primacy placed on indie and mid tier games, by Sony in among their final attempts to prop up the dying Vita, ended up leading to the template Nintendo would follow with the Switch not long after, and to a bustling community of smaller and mid-tier developers that had otherwise been threatened to be orphaned by the HD transition.
The Vita, however, did not need to fail. While many, including Sony themselves, will say that the handheld market was dead, and there was no saving the Vita, history has shown that to be false. The Vita's contemporary competitor, the 3DS, had a troubled start, but managed to rally and ended up doing fairly good numbers; the Switch is en route to becoming the highest selling system of all time, and the primary appeal of that is its portable nature. The Vita's failures, therefore, come down almost entirely to Sony not making an effort, or not the right kind of effort.
With the benefit of hindsight, I want to ask Famiboards - what would you have done to try and have it sell more than it ultimately ended up doing? You essentially have carte blanche, but you act under these constraints:
- You cannot change the system hardware. All of it, including the specs, the OLED screen, the rear touch pad, the battery, and, yes, the memory cards, must be retained. You can choose to make smaller changes to the hardware (you can choose to forego the 3G inclusion entirely, and you can change the charging port from a proprietary one to a standard one, if you wish), but the nature of the system is what it is, you can't change it
- You can make any changes you want to the marketing and release strategy. This includes release window, SKUs, bundles, pricing, and yes, branding (meaning everything up to and including the name is fair game to be changed)
- You can request changes to OS, UI, services, digital store, memory management, ecosystem, how the Vita interacts with other devices, all of that is fine
- You can choose to redirect resources from PS3 and/or PS4 to the PS Vita
- You can make changes to third party outreach (third parties of any size, including Japanese or western, AAA, mid tier, or indie)
- You can make changes to first party studio strategy
- You cannot choose to abandon the Vita. The Vita must release, and it must release in the form it was in. You are, as specified, allowed to make more minor changes
Within the constraints of the situation Sony was in in 2011, would the Vita even have been a "success"? How much more could it have sold? For example, if you post a full fledged plan for making the Vita sell more than it ultimately did, what do you envision the final sales tally being? Would the investment in such a case truly have been worth it?
I look forward to seeing what you have to say.