Is A Perfect Storm Sinking the PlayStation Vita?

It's clear now, a few weeks removed from PlayStation Vita's Japanese launch, that all is not well with Sony's new handheld. After pushing a somewhat respectable 325,000 units in its first 48 hours, Vita has nosedived. In the week leading into Christmas, Vita sold only 72,479 additional units. And while we're still waiting for new sales figures from the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012, something tells me those results aren't going to be good, either.

Such dismal sales figures beg certain questions, and also bring to light certain realities that Sony has to deal with if it's going to turn its fortunes around with Vita. Contrary to speculation around the industry, the PlayStation Vita isn't dead in the water. While it's not even remotely living up to the more lofty heights I set for it when I wrote back in October that PlayStation Vita was set to succeed, it still has plenty of potential. Let's not forget that it's only been released in one territory that represents well under 20 percent of the worldwide gaming market. This is the same market that couldn't possibly care less about Xbox 360, and yet Xbox 360 still thrives. So let's not get too ahead of ourselves.

Then again, poor sales in its home country -- a country absolutely enamored by Vita's predecessor -- could prove to be prophetic. And that spells bad news for Sony.

Before the first full week sales of PlayStation Vita were revealed, I was sitting in San Francisco Airport, readying myself to fly back east to spend Christmas with my family. I broke out my Vita while waiting for my flight, playing Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational. On the plane, I switched out cartridges and began working my way through Uncharted: Golden Abyss, something I repeated on my way back to California a few days after the holiday passed.

But when I was on the plane back west, something suddenly struck me. No one looked at Vita twice, whether in the airport terminal or on the airplane. Casually playing my DS or PSP in years past would always get a glance, perhaps sparking a conversation with a fellow gamer. Nothing like that happened with Vita. Here I was, holding an electronic device that virtually no one in the United States has yet, and folks around me were more interested in their iPads. Vita isn't on people's minds. A lot of people aren't even aware of it. And that's problem number one for Sony.

Yet, the perfect storm that's brewing around Sony's new handheld goes far beyond consumer recognition of a yet-to-be-released piece of hardware. Much of the reason Vita is starting to sink already has to do with a factor I certainly shoved aside in my own pre-release analysis of Vita: Nintendo. With 3DS floundering for most of its short life, Nintendo seemed to be the least of Sony's concern moving forward. But Nintendo pulled off a rather ingenious coup on the Japanese portable market mere weeks before Vita was released. It released two Mario games on 3DS as well as a Monster Hunter title, and sat back and watched as 3DS, like the DS before it, printed money.

Torn between the fairly consistent awesomeness of Nintendo's first party offerings and something more unpredictable, unknown and expensive, it seems that Japanese consumers went to Nintendo in droves. And that trend is happening worldwide, boding ill for Vita's prospects in Europe and North America. Yet, PlayStation Vita has games, too. Indeed, Vita's future lineup looks much more promising than 3DS', so if Nintendo is indeed a factor in the perfect storm -- and I think that it is -- its effect should only be ephemeral. Unless, of course, Nintendo has more first party goodness up its sleeves to coincide with key dates in Sony's launch plans for Vita, something that is entirely possible (and contributes to the old adage: never underestimate Nintendo).


Either way, Nintendo is indeed playing a huge role in Vita's opening weeks stumble, something many of us didn't take into account. And now, Nintendo has sold over four million 3DS units in North America alone before Sony even gets out the gate. Yes, Sony has been here before -- the PS3 was way behind the Xbox 360 because of a year head start and will still ultimately pass it in worldwide sales -- but this situation in particular seems far more dangerous for Sony, mostly because Vita's position in the marketplace is far more tenuous than PlayStation 3's.

It should be obvious enough that Sony has other problems with Vita, too, ones that didn't come to light until well after I proclaimed that Vita would succeed out the gate. Those problems have mostly to do with Sony's inane memory card solution for Vita, as well as how close to the chest Sony held its cards for as long as humanly possible not only about its memory cards but about PlayStation Network names on the device.