The PS Vita is dead, according to one games analyst, and there’s nothing that Sony can do short of slashing the price or making killer software to stop that. Â Outspoken industry analyst, Michael Pachter relayed his thoughts on Sony’s portable in his weekly webseries.
Pachter believes that not even the highly touted streaming play on the PS4 is going to move PS Vitas off of store shelves.
“The Vita is dead, it’s over,” said the analyst on his show Pach-Attack. Â “It’s a really great device that nobody thinks they need… The only thing that’s going to sell more Vitas is a price drop or compelling software.”
And despite Sony’s policy on not releasing their sales numbers to the public, Pachter claimed that it hasn’t been pretty for the handheld. Â “I shudder to tell you how many Vitas were sold this month, the answer is ‘not very many’.”
Sony and Nintendo seem to be having a tough time in convincing people that they need these new products. Â While both the Wii U and the PS Vita are in completely different positions right now, it seems unanimous that the solution to sell more hardware is to slash prices or make killer software. Â Though you can’t really take much away from the PS Vita’s effort over the past couple years. Â We’ve seen both big first party and third party games hit the handheld, but it’s really failed to catch on as a mainstream device.
Sony’s more recent indie push for the PS Vita has opened the handheld to a whole new market of gaming experiences. Â Allowing indie developers to self publish on the handheld, games releasing on the Vita have been on the rise, but they certainly aren’t of the “can’t miss” variety.
Sony does have a few tricks up their sleeve this year. Â Two big first party titles will be hitting the Vita with Killzone: Mercenary and Tearaway, and the promise of playing PS4 games on the handheld is intriguing. Â We’ll have to wait and see if Sony’s second holiday season in North America is any better than its first.
