PlayStation Vita: Sony Promises 'Not to Make Same Mistake' it Made with PSPPlayStation Vita officially launches today, and all eyes are on Sony and its second offering in the portable games market. Vita has launched with a slew of amazing titles to play from both first-party and third parties, and that will be the key to its success. Speaking to IndustryGamers, Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida acknowledged that PSP didn't get the attention it deserved. Sony has vowed to not make the same mistake with Vita.
"For the publishers it's a business and they try to optimize their resource allocation and PSP was unfortunately hit by piracy. Lots of people played our games and third-party games but not necessarily by paying for them. Of course that didn't help the business side and we saw reduced support, especially when they had to work on the newer platforms at that time, PS3 and Xbox 360. And even Sony made the same mistake. We were preparing for PS3, so we had to decide to move a lot of resources from PSP to PS3 – because it was a huge effort to step up from PS2 to PS3. So I was hoping at the time that third parties might help fill in the gaps, but they were facing the same situation, shifting to the new generation of consoles," Yoshida explained to us.
"I totally believe the sales is not something we should be worried about." - Shuhei Yoshida
"So the two problems we had with PSP, for Vita we are making sure from a feature standpoint that developers can incorporate traditional control with new features like back-touch or front touch or gyro. I personally really like the ability to fine tune [my aim with the gyro] when you zoom in and try to snipe someone in Uncharted. To me, it's better control than playing a console game. So those features that we designed into PS Vita, I believe developers will find a way to create some unique or enhanced experience compared to console games. From a worldwide studios standpoint, we will not make the same mistake by shifting resources away from PS Vita – we will make sure to continue putting resources into new Vita games."
As Yoshida mentioned, the software will be the hugely important for Vita - a platform is only as good as the software it can offer players. This was a problem for PSP, and it's something that Sony is doing its best to avoid with Vita.
"People want great games, something very unique and specific to a platform. And at the launch of PSP we were very excited about the large, beautiful screen, and a powerful processor that can handle graphics as good as PS2 games, but not much more. What PSP brought was the ability to play PS2-like games on the go, and that position was great for a couple years, but after new systems like PS3 or Xbox 360 came out, people got used to watching great graphics. So it's not enough. It was our very first portable game system that we introduced, and I'm very happy and proud of how much adoption PSP had, even in the states. But because of the type of platform PSP is, it was hard for us and the software industry to come up with content that cannot be played on a console. So that's one big problem we encountered after a couple years. We couldn't find something new and exciting," Yoshida commented.
Yoshida also doesn't buy into the argument that the sales seen so far will be an indication of how Vita will be received during its first month here in America. And besides, he said that Sony's actually pleased with the response to Vita in its native Japan.
"The response to PS Vita in Japan has been very, very strong," he insisted. "People who purchased Vita and have been playing it are very happy, and there are additional improvements we're always adding, like we just added map functionality and Macintosh support, so this is a growing system, and as we go we'll make it even better. The issue about the sales in Japan, it's not like every system we have sold-in has sold through, but looking at the market in Japan today, it's very understandable. Vita sales are within our expectations, so we are not disappointed, but one thing to note about the sales in December, Nintendo had a perfect storm. They created great titles going into Christmas and they had dropped the price to attract consumers. The other thing is that PSP is still very popular in Japan. Looking at weekly sales, there are lots of new PSP games still coming out – it's still a very strong platform in Japan, and it's also a great entry product because of its lower price, especially for a younger audience. So the transition in Japan from PSP to PS Vita is going to be kind of slow."
"With all that considered, and the price of PS Vita, and the economy and everything, I totally believe the sales is not something we should be worried about," he continued. "Also, some people in Japan may not yet be aware of PS Vita and it has to be experienced. And while Uncharted is a great franchise globally, in Japan it's not that big. There are many big IPs from Japanese publishers that are still upcoming so some people are waiting."
Yoshida proceeded to show us a video of Gravity Daze as an example of a Japanese-developed title to appeal to Japanese gamers. IndustryGamers thinks Vita is a great device, but it's certainly under significant pressure from smartphones and tablets, and Nintendo's 3DS. We'll be watching the platform closely.
