Yoshida appears to have bucked the trend of executives publicly avoiding discussion on the influence of mobile games. When asked directly how much the mobile sector has challenged sales of Vita, he replied: "That's a really big part of it".
"The price point... We were very excited to be able to launch PS Vita for $250, that was our target pricing - under $300, because you have to buy a memory card. But people already own smartphones, right? They're paying lots of money to own smartphones - it's subsidised but they're paying back through a monthly subscription, two years of paying $80 every month, for example. That's a lot of money they're already spending.
"So for them, that's already committed - and in order for them to play games on a smartphone, incremental investment is almost zero. It's hard to compete with zero price, which is also why the free-to-play model makes sense for casual players."
The Vita's global sales performance is unclear - Sony now hides that specific data from investors. The system launched in December 2011 and, by July the next year, had sold about 2.2 million units.
Yoshida also stressed that mobile games was not the only contributing factor to Vita's disappointing sales performance.
"In terms of the installed base, compare it to 3DS - the 3DS is doing much better," he said.CVG
SOURCE
I really, really like Yoshida. He's thatr are executive who doesn't just give me bullshit, but is refreshingly honest. He seems to genuinely love games and his products, and I know for sure that no other executive would have called out a competitor by name, and admitted that they were doing better than their own product.
Anyway, click on the link to read the full thing, it's actually a great interview.
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