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Sony's PlayStation Vita emerged as a Japanese frontrunner from this week's Tokyo Game Show (TGS), leaving Nintendo in a dire situation with its intrinsically flawed 3DS.
Vita, the successor to portable gaming device PSP, was confirmed for a December 17 release in Japan at TGS, with two Sony presentations showing the company understands fully what a portable gaming device needs to be in the post-iPhone world.
Firstly, there are two versions. Both have WiFi, but the more expensive - £30 pricier at about £230 - has a 3G connection. Sony announced at the show that Vita's 3G, in Japan at least, would adopt a pay-as-you-go model, skirting the need for expensive user contracts.
The move differentiates the machine from iOS and Android phones, meaning it can be always-on in a way perfect for games: you pay up front for time online, not for data used.
Vita can be connected always and everywhere. 3DS has no 3G option at all.
Secondly, Sony has gone to great lengths to ensure Vita has a full suite of social networking apps, showing it's cognizant of the expectation to be able to tweet or update Facebook from any mobile device.
Thirdly, Vita is extremely powerful, far more so than iPhone 4 and competitive gaming handsets, and comes replete with just about every input imaginable; it has twin thumbsticks, physical buttons and even a laptop-style trackpad on its rear.
It clearly provides an experience you'll never get on a mobile phone, and in the current handheld gaming market that means everything in terms of survival.
Sony was strong in Tokyo this week, showing it's developed a strategy to enable to Vita to exist in a brutal market opposite the likes of Apple and Google.
Nintendo, on the other hand, has been caught woefully short in the mobile games space with 3DS, it's current console, and its TGS presentation did nothing to allay fears that the Japanese giant is facing a real disaster with the machine.
Following news that 3DS sales have tanked since it launched in March and Nintendo was to slash its price as a result, both gamers and the trade alike were looking to company president Satoru Iwata to announce game-changing moves in Tokyo: instead we saw the leader attempt to fix the broken handheld with lick and spit.
3DS only has one thumbstick compared to Vita's two. This means it's ill-equipped to play modern 3D games, which traditionally use the left stick to move the on-screen character and the right stick to move the game's camera. Following considerable push-back on the decision to leave off a second stick, Nintendo announced at TGS a frankly hideous plastic add-on, called the Slide Pad, in an attempt to bring 3DS up to date.
This won't work. Adding functionality to games machines in this way rarely does. The major problem with augmenting games hardware post-launch is that software developers can never be certain the player has bought the peripheral. From a business perspective, developing a 3DS title with two thumbsticks in mind makes no sense: what happens if the gamer only has one?
The rest of Nintendo's conference was terrible. Iwata and friends announced a Misty Pink 3DS for release in Japan in October, and showed off a couple of "girl" games. Not even the Nintendo faithful were convinced.
Iwata's TGS trump was confirmation that the next in the Monster Hunter series - an 18 million unit-selling handheld phenomenon in Japan traditionally played on Sony's PSP, will release apparently exclusively on 3DS.
Shares in Capcom, Monster Hunter's publisher, cratered as a result.
If there was ever a clear indication that 3DS's time has already passed, it was that the crowd refused to even applaud Iwata until the Monster Hunter announcement. Conversely, Vita was so popular at the show that organisers were forced to close down demo queues due to demand.
Nintendo may have ruled the current hardware generation with Wii and DS, but it's terrifying to see just how quickly stars can rise and fall in the video games space.
3DS imploding, Vita burning bright: expect Sony to confirm western launch details in the coming months.
Follow Patrick Garratt on Twitter: www.twitter.com/patlike
The DS was graphically weak, PSP very powerful, comparable to a PS2. DS lacked analogue sticks, PSP had an analogue stick. DS was very ugly, PSP looked sleek and innovative. DS lacked any sort of media capabilities, PSP came with bells and whistles up the wazoo. etc etc.
Nintendo have had a bad 6months with the 3DS no doubt, and yes it should have had the 2nd analogue slider from the beginning but don't write off Nintendo just yet.
Everything was supposedly stacked in favour of PSP and look how DS won in the end.
The 3DS isn't even supernovaing. Since the price drop, it has been the best selling gaming unit worldwide each week, outselling the DS and PSP by over 300% each week.
Finally, the Vita only had around 80 kiosks for the Vita in total (including third parties in a show that housed 80,000. Of course there will be queues for new technology.
Come on guy, you have to know how things work before write an article.
Because you cited the loss of share value (I do hope you know how stock exchange works), but you didn't mention anything about the increase in sales of 3DS in August (more than +200% in Japan and North America), and sold-outs 3DS is having in Japan because of all announcements and good games arriving in a few weeks.
Maybe we have to wait this holiday season to say something more accurate on 3DS situation since Nintendo platforms usually perform incredibly well on that period, and 3DS will have its best line-up with Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 among the others, and a competitive price.
Well, if we talk about TGS 2011, Vita could do nothing against 3DS line-up; the former has almost the same games PSP had (Minna no Golf, Dynasty Warriors, Disgaea, Persona, Wipeout, Little Big Planet), and a lot of porting (as usual) also from PS3 (and one may argue why a person should prefer PS Vita version over the PS3 one). 3DS has a HUGE effort on third party side, with AAA games as Resident Evil Revelations, Kingdom Hearts 3D, Monster Hunter 3G, Bravely Default, Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright and so on, and a lot of games which in previous iterations have proved to sell really well in Japan, as Hatsune Miku, Dragon Quest Monsters, SD Gundam and so on (also all Level-5 line-up, with both new IPs as Time Travelers and Fantasy Life and established brands as Layton, but the company will hold its own event in October). Therefore, under a commercial point of view, 3DS literally destroyed Vita as in terms of quantity, while regarding quality, it depends on personal tastes. But if 3DS has a big first party support (brands like Mario Kart, Mario and Pokémon usually sell worldwide between 17 and 27 million copies), Vita has very little from Sony itself which could help the platform to sell; the biggest franchise so far is Uncharted, which on PS3 sold less than 5 million, and there's no way it will sell more on PS Vita.
Fiscal year operating income 2000-2010... I guess earning money = doomed, losing money = burns brightly.
also, http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/a_e32005xbox360conference you're not really good predicting videogame stuff lol
Also theres a discussion about your article: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=445762
"Ignorant of Japanese culture, confuses lack of applause for audience disdain, ignores reveals of high profile japanese sellers. Some how forgets that they clapped because Nintendo secured THE BIGGEST GAMING PHENOM IN THE COUNTRY right now."
But clearly if ad-clickthru is what you're after then I'm pretty sure this article is getting the attention you want it to have.
Fanboyism doesn't make for good journalism.