The GTA franchise is just about the only thing that can keep up with Call of Duty and Madden these days. Some Nintendo games put up better sales numbers, but they tend to do it over the course of several years rather than all in one quarter.
Sony is showing flashes of the right idea with cross-play gaming and getting two versions for one low price, but that should be the norm and not an exceptional case. Frankly I'll know that we've finally reached a holy grail in open gaming when XBOX, PlayStation, Nintendo, and PC gamers can play together in an online game of some sort...that will be a hallmark day.
Every game console has a slow period after its initial "release window." Why gamers always complain about "no new games" six months after a console's release is beyond me...maybe they're new gamers.
The hardware in the PSVita is stellar. Compare it to your favorite smartphone -- iPhone, Galaxy S III, Nexus -- and see which one has better specs on the whole. That smartphone without a contract probably costs two to three times what the Vita does. It is a very forward-looking console that should be relevant for the next eight years at least.
I have high hopes for the long-term future of the Vita.
PS -- Who the hell is buying 3DSes at a 19M units sold rate? Wow.
@adagio_spider Sony memory cards have a small bit of built-in "protection" in them. That and the unique form factor are supposed to make it harder to copy / bootleg the console's information directly from the card. They just pass the price mark-up on to the customers.
The highest price I could imagine for a console is $300. If they can get it down to $200, it will sell like hotcakes for the first six months at least. $250 is the more likely price point...depends on what is included in the package.
Ironically, I was planning to pre-order one of these, but Nintendo waited so long to come with the details that it now makes it financially difficult for me to do. (It would have been feasible if I could spread the payments out over the course of, say, ten months.) I'm not sure why they waited so long to release the concrete details....they're not Apple. If they're afraid that Microsoft or Sony are going to copy their innovations, that's going to happen regardless of when they announce.
I was buying magazines here and there until this year when I decided to subscribe. I was actually hoping they would begin publishing this magazine in some e-reader-capable format like they do with Official XBOX Magazine. Maybe Nintendo made such a transition difficult.
Anyways, I hate to see venerable, long-lived institutions in the gaming space disappear. I know that change is inevitable, but losing a 24-year-old gaming magazine is like losing a 600-year-old tree...you just feel like a piece of history has gone missing.
I'm glad Sony recognizes that the only way for the Vita to succeed is to attract developers to it. But I hope they're not placing all their eggs in the AAA-game basket. I would love to see a rich community of apps and indie titles too...something like Infinity Blade or Order and Chaos would be great on the Vita.
Sony should make it as easy as possible for smaller devs to port their App Store wares to the Vita.
I think the price of the Vita is fair given the hardware in it. We pay more for smartphones that have less capable hardware in them, and that's even after we commit to two-year contracts. I have no doubt that the price will come down as the components get cheaper and the manufacturing process improves.
@UnwantedSpam I also have a Vita, and I'm optimistic that it will eventually take off. Without going into a long spiel, I see the potential for lots of different styles of gaming on the system. I think developers may be a little gun-shy because many of them got burned by bootlegging on the PSP, but I think that once they see the value proposition for "real" mobile gaming, they'll be back.
The PS Vita has only been on American shelves for about half a year. It's still early yet...almost every console I've observed has had growing pains at this point.
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