Lack of Piracy Killed the PS Vita

[teh_lurv]

 

Again, it wasn't piracy that made the PSP more attractive. It was the after effect of having homebrew that kept the unit in my pocket. I don't know about the durability of the Vita but my PSPs lasted a long time. I could always blame myself for their failure (trying to install a TV out, dropping it, etc..)

 

I think "jailbreaking" the PSP was sort of a remedy for Sonys software mistakes. The Vita didn't have that to fall back on.

 

Even if piracy/homebrews kept the PSP in your pocket, it isn't benefiting Sony one bit. You using it has an handheld emulator system isn't putting cash into your pockets. Even if you're telling your friends, "Hey get a PSP, it kicks ass for emulating!" is really only netting Sony potential system purchases and not game purchases, which is where the real profit is made.

[+Gemintronic]

 

Even if piracy/homebrews kept the PSP in your pocket, it isn't benefiting Sony one bit. You using it has an handheld emulator system isn't putting cash into your pockets. Even if you're telling your friends, "Hey get a PSP, it kicks ass for emulating!" is really only netting Sony potential system purchases and not game purchases, which is where the real profit is made.

 

Yeah. This is the business perspective. From a gamer perspective I'd recommend a PSP new or used to a friend. Some companies get a clue and follow what the customers want. Some just plow ahead despite customer needs - thus the Vita.

[masschamber]

I'd say piracy on the psp killed the vita, the psp was incredibly strong out of the gate, and had terrific support during it's heyday, by the end though rampant piracy probably discouraged producing for the vita.

[Atariboy]

I'd say that the smartphone killed the Vita, not piracy on the PSP.

[Mord]

I'd say piracy on the psp killed the vita, the psp was incredibly strong out of the gate, and had terrific support during it's heyday, by the end though rampant piracy probably discouraged producing for the vita.

 

That would be like saying piracy on any console should discourage/kill any console that comes after it. If a dev/publisher is stupid enough to avoid a new system because of flaws on a mostly unrelated older system, they'll market themselves into bankruptcy within a few years when they realize they have nothing to develop for.

 

Smartphones are probably a more likely culprit. The 3DS would have the same kind of problem if not for pokemon and a few other assorted nintendo exclusives.

 

But even with that, Sony themselves share a bigger portion of blame since if anyone seemed discouraged about promoting the vita, it was them. And that certainly doesn't help flock developers to it.

[Atariboy]

To elaborate even further, the 3DS is hurting as well. While Nintendo wasn't scared away as easily as Sony was and the 3DS has benefited from that heavy support from Nintendo, dig some numbers out to compare the 3DS from year to year with the same points in the lifespan of the DS for an easy demonstration of the effect of the smartphone.

 

It has only sold a fraction of hardware and software as that of the DS up to this point in each of their lifespans. And making the numbers look just that much worse, it should be noted that the 3DS isn't going up against another successful dedicated handheld that sold over 80 million units like the DS did with the PSP. Vita and 3DS combined perhaps have done 20% of the business at this point as their last-gen counterparts had.

 

You can undoubtedly blame the rise of the smartphone for this drastic decline.

Edited December 9, 2015 by Atariboy

[Jess Ragan]

They're doing as well as can be expected in this market. It would have helped if Iwata hadn't gotten greedy and charged $250 out the gate for one. Were you shrooming, man? Even in 2011 the 3DS didn't have the tech to justify that price.

 

I'd have to agree with the other guy that Sony just doesn't have a grasp of what makes handheld gaming work. A near console quality handheld isn't a substitute for games that specifically designed to play on the go, in short bursts.

 

Having said that, I'm a big fan of later PSP models and am glad the system exists. It's proven remarkably resilient after all these years thanks to the speedy hardware, a great library, and of course all the homebrew development on it. The Vita, on the other hand, probably wouldn't get much attention from me if it didn't have support for PSP games. I play them more than anything else on the system.

[Lost Dragon]

As a die hard PSP fan (currently own 4, but had a total of 6 in my life), i so badly wanted to get a Vita as the screen looked gorgeous, i badly want Killzone Merc, TxK etc but.....

The memory card prices alone killed any chances of that as did the sheer lack of Killer Titles. Resistance and COD were wasted ops, we never saw the annouced Vita Bioshock game, Dust 514 never lived up to the hype so the potential to use the Vita as a cross-play device was wasted, i prefer to play things like Uncharted on the big telly, not small screen and Sony closing down the studios that were producing original titles for Vita was a huge mistake in my eyes.

Without the studios to produce system selling games, just where was the future for the system?.

If Sony themselves were unwilling to invest in the device, my thoughts were simply why on earth should i?

[omegadot]

Memory card decision remains top of my WTF list for the Vita. The fact that my hands tend to cover the speaker when in use are up there too. Wonderful system with a redundant execution and a few head scratchers.

[+Gemintronic]

Memory card decision remains top of my WTF list for the Vita. The fact that my hands tend to cover the speaker when in use are up there too. Wonderful system with a redundant execution and a few head scratchers.

 

Too many third party PSP memory stick makers. I myself side stepped the exorbitant prices of Sony sticks by buying an adapter and shoving two 64gb TF cards in there.

[Mord]

Memory card decision remains top of my WTF list for the Vita. The fact that my hands tend to cover the speaker when in use are up there too. Wonderful system with a redundant execution and a few head scratchers.

 

Well, I'd have to agree with this point as well. I myself wouldn't have bothered buying a Vita if I wasn't able to get a 16gig memory card virtually for free.

[Serguei2]

If a least, all vita games are on cards, I would buy the console. Unfortunately most games i want are available only on download.

 

The problem is not just for vita, but for all new systems as well.

[Bill Loguidice]

If a least, all vita games are on cards, I would buy the console. Unfortunately most games i want are available only on download.

 

The problem is not just for vita, but for all new systems as well.

 

Even though I'm as hardcore of a collector of physical gaming-related goods as anyone, I have to say that I've fully embraced the digital everything mindset on PC, consoles, and handhelds. I just love having my games only a download away on whatever device I'm on and not having to fumble with physical media (particularly good with multiple systems). The only time this really breaks down a bit is when you have a situation like with Nintendo tying accounts to one device, or, in the Vita's case, memory cards with a relatively limited capacity that are overly expensive and are not easily swappable. Still, even in those cases I really wouldn't want to go back to the old way of doing things.

[Mord]

 

Even though I'm as hardcore of a collector of physical gaming-related goods as anyone, I have to say that I've fully embraced the digital everything mindset on PC, consoles, and handhelds. I just love having my games only a download away on whatever device I'm on and not having to fumble with physical media (particularly good with multiple systems). The only time this really breaks down a bit is when you have a situation like with Nintendo tying accounts to one device, or, in the Vita's case, memory cards with a relatively limited capacity that are overly expensive and are not easily swappable. Still, even in those cases I really wouldn't want to go back to the old way of doing things.

 

I guess I can add this to another reason why the Vita isn't doing that great. There are people that have fully embraced digital, but it certainly isn't enough of them to justify keeping the majority of games digital on the Vita - and the remaining being difficult to find. I've only bought 1 Vita game digitally. The rest of the digital games on my vita are either from cross-buys from the PS3 or the freebies from being a PSN+ member. As a result my card is already almost full, which makes it VERY difficult for me to justify buying any games explicitly for the vita. Where I'm stuck with a 16gig card for digital purchases, and the lack of a desire to buy a new card since they're still hella expensive, it restricts any desire for me to buy any vita games digitally - especially without a massive sale. I'd say a lot of Vita owners are in similar situations, which just hurts Vita sales even more.

 

I'd probably have bought more physical games for the vita other than the 3 I own if the games I wanted to buy were given a physical release, and the physical release weren't a pain to obtain. (And when you add in my reluctance/boycotting of buying "new" gutted games at gamestop, it makes it harder still!)

[Serguei2]

The drawback with download games, If something goes wrong with the console, you'll have to download the same games and maybe paying the same games too. I'm not sure about console/portable/smartphone but on PCs, you have to register to the website to play these games.

 

For ne, you buy games from the stores and play it without bothering to register to websites to play.

[Bill Loguidice]

 

I guess I can add this to another reason why the Vita isn't doing that great. There are people that have fully embraced digital, but it certainly isn't enough of them to justify keeping the majority of games digital on the Vita - and the remaining being difficult to find. I've only bought 1 Vita game digitally. The rest of the digital games on my vita are either from cross-buys from the PS3 or the freebies from being a PSN+ member. As a result my card is already almost full, which makes it VERY difficult for me to justify buying any games explicitly for the vita. Where I'm stuck with a 16gig card for digital purchases, and the lack of a desire to buy a new card since they're still hella expensive, it restricts any desire for me to buy any vita games digitally - especially without a massive sale. I'd say a lot of Vita owners are in similar situations, which just hurts Vita sales even more.

 

I'd probably have bought more physical games for the vita other than the 3 I own if the games I wanted to buy were given a physical release, and the physical release weren't a pain to obtain. (And when you add in my reluctance/boycotting of buying "new" gutted games at gamestop, it makes it harder still!)

 

Actually, I think the lack of success for the Vita at retail is precisely WHY the majority of games are digital only these days. There's no point in taking on the risks of unsold physical inventory (or stores not wanting to carry it in the first place) when you can serve the loyal audience with digital only product that's far less risky to produce.

 

It's a shame that Sony can't change the way memory cards work and make it as easy to swap memory cards as it is game cards. It messes things up when you try to use different memory cards, which, given the proliferation of games available to PS+ members, seems like Sony losing out on more purchases of no doubt high profit memory cards.

[Bill Loguidice]

The drawback with download games, If something goes wrong with the console, you'll have to download the same games and maybe paying the same games too. I'm not sure about console/portable/smartphone but on PCs, you have to register to the website to play these games.

 

For ne, you buy games from the stores and play it without bothering to register to websites to play.

 

That's the beauty of a properly setup digital distribution system, though. The hardware is basically irrelevant, because all of your stuff is stored safely in the cloud. If something happens to one system, you just download it again on another system. If done right, it's not that big of a deal and provides incredible flexibility. Compare that to a single disc or cartridge, and you have to ensure the safety of that single disc or cartridge. That also ignores the high probability of it needing updates and a high storage footprint anyway, so little is actually gained, other than the illusion of owning a physical copy of the game.

 

As for the PC, in terms of physical media, it's more or less a lost cause at this point, since most physical product you get requires tying it to something like Steam anyway, and of course is going to have updates that have to be downloaded, so it's not like the physical media is good for much of anything anyway.

[Mord]

 

Actually, I think the lack of success for the Vita at retail is precisely WHY the majority of games are digital only these days. There's no point in taking on the risks of unsold physical inventory (or stores not wanting to carry it in the first place) when you can serve the loyal audience with digital only product that's far less risky to produce.

 

At which point we end up with a chicken and egg situation. Company doesn't want to risk selling physical because games are selling so poorly, resulting in games selling poorly because people don't want to buy digitally due to the limited sizes of memory cards and the insane price of those very cards. Certainly worked for me. I skipped the PSP Go over digital issues, but even with the many drawbacks of umd cards I still bought a heck of a lot of games. (Most brand new I think, with some still not even opened.)

 

Unfortunately the Vita never had a good selection of physical games from Day 1 so I don't know if I can agree that physical games selling poorly is the reason they push for digital. You can't sell what you don't offer after all. Given what Sony wanted to do with the PSP Go, and how badly that crashed and burned, Sony probably gave the Vita the option of physical games reluctantly to avoid another Go while still trying to force people into the digital. I can say I would have avoided the Vita if it was a purely digital device like the Go, and while I kinda doubt Sony will do another handheld at this point, I also expect them to attempt another purely digital handheld next if they do. Given the (lack of) support the Vita ended up seeing, I'm probably not going to bother with another Sony handheld unless I see at least 10 must-buy physical games for it first. (My new standard so to speak.)

[Serguei2]

 

Actually, I think the lack of success for the Vita at retail is precisely WHY the majority of games are digital only these days. There's no point in taking on the risks of unsold physical inventory (or stores not wanting to carry it in the first place) when you can serve the loyal audience with digital only product that's far less risky to produce.

 

It's a shame that Sony can't change the way memory cards work and make it as easy to swap memory cards as it is game cards. It messes things up when you try to use different memory cards, which, given the proliferation of games available to PS+ members, seems like Sony losing out on more purchases of no doubt high profit memory cards.

 

Yeah. The games became digitals today. Not only digital games would hurt PS Vita but all the video games as well.

 

No wonder why today video game systems won't be sold as many as they did in 1990s - 2000s.

 

Smartphones and PCs won't affect because those devices are not made for gaming only.

 

Nintendo introduced amiibos. The new gadgets would boost Nintendo's devices... For a while.

 

I'm not surprised that if in the next generations, stores will sell consoles only. If you want to play games, you will have to download them.

[Serguei2]

 

That's the beauty of a properly setup digital distribution system, though. The hardware is basically irrelevant, because all of your stuff is stored safely in the cloud. If something happens to one system, you just download it again on another system. If done right, it's not that big of a deal and provides incredible flexibility. Compare that to a single disc or cartridge, and you have to ensure the safety of that single disc or cartridge. That also ignores the high probability of it needing updates and a high storage footprint anyway, so little is actually gained, other than the illusion of owning a physical copy of the game.

 

As for the PC, in terms of physical media, it's more or less a lost cause at this point, since most physical product you get requires tying it to something like Steam anyway, and of course is going to have updates that have to be downloaded, so it's not like the physical media is good for much of anything anyway.

 

I'm not sure what's a cloud is. Is it a kind of stockage online when you buy download games?

 

If a Vita breaks, Can I download the same games on other Vita free of charge?

[Bill Loguidice]

 

If a Vita breaks, Can I download the same games on other Vita free of charge?

 

Yes, because it's all account-based, not system based.

[Bill Loguidice]

 

Yeah. The games became digitals today. Not only digital games would hurt PS Vita but all the video games as well.

 

No wonder why today video game systems won't be sold as many as they did in 1990s - 2000s.

 

Smartphones and PCs won't affect because those devices are not made for gaming only.

 

Nintendo introduced amiibos. The new gadgets would boost Nintendo's devices... For a while.

 

I'm not surprised that if in the next generations, stores will sell consoles only. If you want to play games, you will have to download them.

 

Digital only has nothing to do with sales. Sales are what they are - and they are rather healthy, save for the handheld market - because of this being a completely different type of market than it was in the 1990s and 2000s. Smartphones, tablets, set top boxes, and all of the hybrid devices have made a huge impact on the relative desirability of traditional videogames. Just about everything is digital now, so for videogames to not move to that model as well would be silly. It's just a natural evolution.

 

And yes, it's quite possible that once this generation of systems peters out, we'll have primarily digital only consoles and handhelds. Again, we're pretty much already there, with any physical media (outside of the 3DS, Vita, or Wii U, at this point) merely being an ownership authentication, and most of the game being installed and updated "digitally" from an online server.

[Bill Loguidice]

 

Unfortunately the Vita never had a good selection of physical games from Day 1 so I don't know if I can agree that physical games selling poorly is the reason they push for digital. You can't sell what you don't offer after all. Given what Sony wanted to do with the PSP Go, and how badly that crashed and burned, Sony probably gave the Vita the option of physical games reluctantly to avoid another Go while still trying to force people into the digital. I can say I would have avoided the Vita if it was a purely digital device like the Go, and while I kinda doubt Sony will do another handheld at this point, I also expect them to attempt another purely digital handheld next if they do. Given the (lack of) support the Vita ended up seeing, I'm probably not going to bother with another Sony handheld unless I see at least 10 must-buy physical games for it first. (My new standard so to speak.)

 

I doubt Sony would do another handheld, but if they did, you can all but guarantee it wouldn't have physical media. The only longshot I can see Sony doing is what they should have done with the Vita, and that's make a gaming-centric Android handheld, but obviously that wouldn't involve physical media either.

 

Let's face it, whether you like physical media or not, its days of mainstream usage are, at best, numbered. Video, audio, software, games, etc., all have a significant focus on digital already, often at the expense of physical media. That's not going to change.

[eightbit]

You know, reading through I see some points being made on the device perhaps being based on Android (that it would have helped). I doubt it. I bought in to the Xperia Play (aka the "PlayStation phone") and I did really like it. But it did not take off at all. It had the power to do so and came with PSX emulation as well as being a full fledged Android phone capable of playing all of the emulators and games...with real controls. And it was a phone of course. I think poor marketing and a lack of large internal storage killed that off...but still it should have had more coverage than it did. It died off silently.

 

I also see points of homebrew and emulation. I have been a handheld emulation nut for years. The GP2x, Caanoo, Wiz, hacked PSP with emulators...even the Gizmondo and Zodiac with them. But nowadays I am burned out on emulation. I have emulators coming out of my *** I can live fine without homebrew and emulators on my Vita just as long as I can have some fun with the device with its current offerings. And I most certainly do. It is a great handheld but I know it is sadly the end of it, and perhaps the beginning of the end for all dedicated handheld game systems.

 

And Bill hit the nail on the head regarding physical media of all types. I said this about 7 or 8 years ago and people laughed at me. The days of physical media are sadly coming to an end. I do not expect the next iteration of PlayStation (or other consoles) to rely on anything but downloadable media. More likely streaming media going forward shortly after they remove the ability to even download your titles. "Dumb terminal" game systems are where we are going. Internet connections of today are fast enough for it and it makes economic sense from all angles. Piracy is obliterated as there is no game to pirate (it is in the "cloud"...running on dedicated hardware from God knows where), systems are cheaper to manufacture as they do not require Bluray drives and so on, no manufacturing costs for physical media and packaging, and probably more benefits for the companies that I am not thinking of at the moment. The only person that really gets hurt is the collector who at that point will really have nothing to collect.

Edited December 13, 2015 by eightbit