The PlayStation Vita got off to a rocking start in Japan, selling over 300,000 of the new handheld. In its second week on the market, the sales have begun to sputter, selling around 75,000 units. According to the most recent sales data, these second week numbers put the PlayStation Vita behind not only Nintendo’s 3Ds, but the PSP, Wii, and PlayStation 3 as well.
In fairness, the Vita is going head to head with Nintendo’s handheld that is roughly half the price. Throw in the fact that Nintendo has just recently released Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land, and you can see that consumers have a tough decision on their hands indeed. With the 3DS sales ramping up after the massive price reduction, software sales for these two popular franchises skyrocketed according to the Media Create data.
The PlayStation Vita is due for a worldwide release early in 2012, it will be interesting to see if the handheld will need to follow Nintendo’s lead and reduce the price of the device to keep up with the competition.