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PlayStation Boss Defends Vita, Slams Social Gaming
donniebaseball23 writes "Sony Computer Entertainment America boss Jack Tretton has come out swinging to defend the lackluster response the games industry has seen with the PS Vita. He deemed the sales level for the portable as 'acceptable' so far, and he brushed off any notion that social and free-to-play games are putting huge pressure on the portable and dedicated consoles market. 'I think the opportunity to be in the console business is greater than ever before,' he said. '[Social and free-to-play] is a business I think a lot of companies are learning is difficult to sustain for the long term. It's an adjunct or it's an add-on, but it's not where gaming is headed. It's an additive diversion. There's a place for social and freemium, but it's not going to replace the business models that are out there.'"
The company is having a hard time getting third-party developers interested in the Vita platform.
...managed to convince themselves that giving their customer choices will be bad for business.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
the Vita platforms has a ton of really cool potential.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Executive in entrenched industry doesn't like new disruptive technology driving industry shift!
The thing is, he could even be right that social/casual/freemium gaming is not sustainable and not going to supplant his business model. But it's hardly news that he thinks so.
...it's that everyone already has an iPhone or Android in their pocket and doesn't want a whole separate device for gaming.
... made the playstation phone like every one wanted
Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etal... They shouldn't be scared, they should all be very, VERY Frightened! Coming in March 2013, OUYA's gonna get 'em! http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/372183/20120809/ouya-kickstarter-pre-order-release-date-specs.htm
Gaming was never the draw for most people using portable devices; occupying time was the draw. People can do that with more stuff now, so of course the value of a strictly-gaming device is going to fall.
The company is having a hard time getting third-party developers interested in the Vita platform.
Aww, poor Sony. Why on Earth would developers not like them?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I have a Vita, it's a nice piece of kit, lack of games is a bit of a concern, I've had mine for months yet only 3 games so far. It doesn't help that when on the tube (London Underground) you're lucky to be in a position where you have both hands free. I prefer reading on my kindle, least you're certain to have one hand free during rush hour!
Now portable wise it's the 1Ghz Pandora that I should be receiving next week. Generally it seems qemu is able to emulate roughly a 75Mhz Pentium on there. Just hope that Master of Orion 2 is playable on the move. Oh and I'm not trying to sell one to you (I'm not affiliated in anyway), you should really check it out;
http://www.openpandora.org/index.php
I can't buy a vita because looking at one makes me sad. .. And fatally crippled by it's software. Sony so completely, amazingly out of touch with what the consumer wants that it can not make a functioning game ecosystem. They've taken their previous. "You'll take our shit and /like/ it" development model to the extreme and wonder why developers are giving it a pass.
Amazing hardware with great controls. Fast quad core CPU, OLED screen, everything you want.
I know most of you reading this have a bias and predisposition that makes you unable to understand that iOS and andriod devices are now competing for the same dollars that traditional handheld game systems once had tied up.. But they do. Ask any young kid what they want between an ipad, iphone, andriod phone, andriod tab, vita, and 3ds. If you're over ~23 years old be prepared to be shocked. Kids want ipads. Not the machines you used to play pokemon growing up.
Portable gaming without traditional d-pad and button controls is here. Understand it, or be shoved aside. .. Imagine if nintendo sold an official iphone game controller shell and sold pokemon games on the app store. Yeah, they'd make a killing. You know it. I know it. Why don't they do it? Pride. Plain old stubborn Japanese pride will be the death of Nintendo and Sony in the portable arena. It's 2012 and they're products have not budged one nanometer from their previous iterations.
Sony's having a hard time getting *gamers* interested in the Vita. It's an amazingly powerful handheld, but it's trying to offer $60, 40-hour console-level games in a portable.
It's competing not just with Nintendo's handheld, but with the iPhone and Android, and even to an extent Facebook games. Which are shorter and less involved, yes, but also cheaper, possibly even "free" (or at least, free-to-play, pay-to-win).
Problem is, portable gaming has shifted. It's not something you sit in front of for hours and play, it's something you play for a few minutes on your coffee break. Nintendo at least tries to make games that you *can* play for just a few minutes. They're not perfect at it (as evidenced by their own sales problems), but they're at least aware of the problem. Sony seems to be betting the house on people wanting full-sized games on a handheld, and that's just not really true anymore (to an extent, I doubt it ever really was). In the time it takes to *load* some Vita games, I can have finished a round of Angry Birds or Edge or whatever.
The other problem is that there's just no must-have games for it yet. For either handheld, really. They have a few good games apiece, but nothing that will sell not just the game, but the console. Third-parties rarely make those games - it's usually first-parties - but it doesn't help to not have them.
Curent portables have made huge advances in technology, but the form factor doesn't support these capabilities. When I am using a mobile device, I am not looking for a deeply immersive gaming experience. Even if I did want that, a 4 inch screen isn't going to cut it, regardless of the resolution. Just because hardware makers can port much of the graphic and input technologies into a mobile device, doesn't mean that they should.
For portable gaming, it is clear that people are satisfied with relatively simplistic gameplay and graphics. A "retro" arcade type game is much better suited to the capabilities of a mobile device and the amount of attention being mobile allows.
The Vita's only been in North America since February. (In Japan since one week before Christmas.) It has already sold ~2 million units. Of course that's tiny compared to the 18 miilion sold for 3DS, but it's par for how Sony v. Nintendo operates. In the previous generation:
DS - 130 million
PSP- 70 million
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Everybody is always predicting Nintendo's doom. They predicted it with the Gamecube (with merit since it finished in 2nd) (statistically-tied with Xbox), then the DS because they said nobody wants two screens, then the Wii because they claimed it was underpowered. The later two are now the #1 portable and TV console respectively. So much for people's prognostications.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
And they put outdated hardware in it. What was nice about it was the slide out controller. Everything else was substandard. I couldn't help but feel the motivation was to not cannibalize anticipated sales of their upcoming Vita. As a result they have a variety of devices all trying not to compete with one another at the sacrifice of functionality and/or performance.