Topic: PlayStation Vita (PS Vita) - previously known as NGP

[Shaymin]

.....and then the 3DS exhaled.
 

... as did my wallet.

[SixthAngel]

Hirai pointed to providing gamers with a solid launch lineup as the reason for the delay.

but that didn't stop the 3DS...

[NWR_insanolord]

Well then I guess I'm going to have more money to spend on other things.

[Chozo Ghost]

Sony has confirmed that the PlayStation Vita will not be coming out in North America and Europe until 2012: http://www.industrygamers.com/news/sonys-ps-vita-not-coming-to-us-or-europe-until-2012/

Good. This means the 3DS will have the holiday season all to itself, and when you combine that with the price cut and the release of high profile games I smell another money printing about to begin...

[NWR_insanolord]

I wonder if Nintendo will regret the price drop, or at least the severity of it, now that they're going to go through the holiday season unopposed.

[TJ Spyke]

I don't think they had the PSV in mind with the price drop itself, the system need a big drop since it had yet to even break the 1 million mark in North America yet and was not doing well elsewhere either (except in Japan). I will admit that they may have considered dropping it just to $200 though.

[broodwars]

I don't mind the Vita being delayed.  I have plenty to play on my PSP right now, and all my would-be Vita was looking to be by the time it launched was a more comfortable way to play my PSP games.  This delay may hurt Sony in the short run due to Nintendo being unopposed on the handheld side this Christmas, but if it means the Vita actually launches with a good launch lineup (something Nintendo completely bungled with the 3DS) it should pay-off in the long-run.

[NWR_insanolord]

I don't think they had the PSV in mind with the price drop itself, the system need a big drop since it had yet to even break the 1 million mark in North America yet and was not doing well elsewhere either (except in Japan). I will admit that they may have considered dropping it just to $200 though.

I don't think the Vita played any real role in the price drop either, but they might have had a different outlook on what to do if they'd known they'd have the rest of the year all to themselves. Like you said, I think $199 would have been much more of a possibility in their eyes in that event.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Analyst says: "Sony is under major pressure to cut the price of the Vita or risk a major failure."
Sony responds: the company [Sony] won’t engage in a price war with Nintendo.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-04/sony-under-pressure-to-cut-playstation-vita-price-after-nintendo.html

“PS Vita’s quite expensive,” said Takeda, 36, an event planner in Tokyo, who owns both a PlayStation Portable and Nintendo Co. DS handheld machine. “I don’t think I’ll be one of those people rushing to buy it on the release date.”

Takeda helps illustrate why pressure is building on Sony to cut prices of its newest game machine after Nintendo slashed the cost of its new 3-D portable player to as low as $169 and as more gamers flock to Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone and iPad to play titles such as Rovio Mobile Oy’s “Angry Birds.”

Kazuo Hirai, Sony Chairman Howard Stringer’s top lieutenant, signaled yesterday the company won’t engage in a price war with Nintendo.

“Gamers are increasingly anticipating Sony to lower prices, especially after the 3DS cut,” said Hideki Yasuda, a Tokyo-based analyst at Ace Securities Co. “Sony is under major pressure to cut the price of the Vita or risk a major failure.”

U.S. consumers will be able to lay their hands on PlayStation Vita, the successor for the model that went on sale in 2004, after Christmas, starting at $249 to $299 for a 3G version. Japanese consumers will be able to buy the Vita, which feature an organic light-emitting diode display and touchpads at the back, by the end of this year from 24,980 yen ($313) to 29,980 yen.

“We have a very good product at a very affordable price,” Hirai, president of Sony’s Consumer & Products Services group, said. “There’s no need to lower the price just because somebody else that happens to be in the video game industry decided they were going to.”

[NWR_insanolord]

Analysts putting the 3DS on the same side of that equation as Apple, going against the "expensive" Vita. So far so good for that price drop.

[Chozo Ghost]

Analyst says: "Sony is under major pressure to cut the price of the Vita or risk a major failure."

It deserves to fail because of the stupid name they gave it.

[TJ Spyke]

I laugh at Bloomberg calling the Nintendo DS "Nintendo Co. DS".

[BlackNMild2k1]

Sony supposedly already cut features to match the 3DS in price.

They are supposedly also not taking much of a loss if any at all because of it.

Now that the $250 price point is not an even playing ground, anyone think that maybe they put some onboard memory back in or up the RAM again?

[Adrock]

They will if developers ask for it though I'm not sure it's going to happen. Sony may double the RAM in a revision. Every version after the original 1000 model had 64MB of RAM so that's a possibility.

Anyway, I think Nintendo was smart to drop the price as low as $170 as opposed to $200. It has nothing to do with Vita. Nintendo's bread and butter has always been publishing games, but they need to sell the hardware first. The lower the price of the box, the more attractive the product. I wouldn't have bought a 3DS even for the free games if the price was $200. I recall saying I'd break and get one at $180 and Nintendo dropped the price even lower. I debated it over a few days, but that hefty price drop sealed the deal.

Vita is in an odd position. Sony hasn't convinced me that I don't already own one. They keep talking about how it can play the same games as PS3. That's a technological boner but I'm not going to buy new hardware to play the same games on a smaller screen. Nintendo may have sweet talked me with free NES/GBA games but the main reason I bought it was for 3DS games. Right now, as far as I'm concerned, I already own a Vita and unless Sony convinces me otherwise, I'm not going to buy another one just so I can play it in the bathroom.

[Chozo Ghost]

Maybe Nintendo could have dropped the 3DS price to $200 and bundled a game with it? That might have been a better way for them to go than to drop the price to $169.99 with no bundled game. Another thing they could have done is sent a voucher to those who paid $250 so they could pick up the bundled game for free in addition to or instead of the free downloads.

But whats done is done and Nintendo isn't going to change it now.

[Ymeegod]

According to this, Sony's losing 5000 yen for each Japanese Vita sold so if you do the match the actual cost of the Vista is around $380 (24980 + 5000 = $380). 

So yeah, Sony's still selling at a loss.

[TJ Spyke]

$390, even worse.  But where did you hear that they are losing 5,000 yen?

[Ymeegod]

NM--just read an followup article and it states "an Nikko Securities analyst, Kazaharu Miura of SMBC Nikko Securities" and not an official Sony rep like the title in the article led me to believe. 

Analysts are fine but that's like a weatherman--they're not at all realiable.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Vita Specs Confirmed
512MB Sys RAM + 128MB VRAM = 640MB Total Ram
http://www.sys-con.com/node/1947549

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCE) today announced that it will introduce dedicated applications for Facebook, foursquare, Skype(TM) and Twitter to PlayStation®Vita (PS Vita) which will launch in Japan by the end of 2011, followed by the U.S. and Europe early next year.

Code: [Select]

Platform Name     PlayStation(R)Vita
    Model number      PCH-1000 series
    CPU               ARM(R) Cortex(TM)-A9 core (4 core)
    GPU               SGX543MP4+
    External           Approx. 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5mm (width x height x depth)
     Dimensions        (tentative, excludes largest projection)
                       5 inches (16:9), 960 x 544, Approx. 16 million colors,
    Screen             OLED
    ------             ------------------------------------------------------
    (Touch screen)    Multi touch screen (capacitive type)
    --------------    ------------------------------------
    Main memory       512MB
    -----------       -----
    VRAM              128MB
    ----              -----
    Rear touch pad    Multi touch pad (capacitive type)
    Cameras           Front camera, Rear camera
                      Frame rate : 120fps@320x240(QVGA), 60fps@640x480(VGA)
                      Resolution : Up to 640x480(VGA)
    Sound             Built-in stereo speakers
                      Built-in microphone
                       Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope,
                       three-axis accelerometer), Three-axis electronic
    Sensors            compass
    -------           ------------------------------------------------------
    Location          Built-in GPS (3G/Wi-Fi model only)
    --------          ----------------------------------
                      Wi-Fi location service support
                      ------------------------------

    Keys / Switches   PS button
    ---------------   Power button
                      Directional buttons (Up/Down/Right/Left)
                      Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square)
                      Shoulder buttons (Right/Left)
                      Right stick, Left stick
                      START button, SELECT button
                                                         Volume buttons (+/-)
    Wireless
     communications   Mobile network connectivity  (3G/Wi-Fi model only)
                       IEEE 802.11b/g/n (n = 1x1)(Wi-Fi) (Infrastructure
                       mode/Ad-hoc mode)
                      Bluetooth(R) 2.1+EDR (A2DP/AVRCP/HSP)
                      -----------------------------------
    Slots/Ports       PlayStation(R)Vita card slot
    -----------       --------------------------
                      Memory card slot
                      ----------------
                      SIM card slot (3G/Wi-Fi model only)
                      -----------------------------------
                       Multi-use port (for USB data communication, DC IN,
                       Audio (Stereo Out /Mono In), Serial data
                       communication),
                      ---------------------------------------------------
                       Headset jack (Stereo mini jack) (for Audio (Stereo Out
                       /Mono In))
                       ----------
                      Accessory port
                      --------------
    Power             Built-In Lithium-ion Battery,
    -----             -----------------------------
                      AC adaptor
                      ----------
    Supported         Music
    ---------         -----
                       -- MP3 MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer 3, MP4 (MPEG-4 AAC),
    AV content         WAVE (Linear PCM)
    ----------        -------------------------------------------------
    format            Videos
    ------            ------
                       -- MPEG-4 Simple Profile (AAC), H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
                       High/Main/Baseline Profile (AAC)
                       --------------------------------
                      Photos
                      ------
                      -- JPEG (Exif 2.2.1), TIFF, BMP, GIF, PNG
                      -----------------------------------------

Oh yeah, and something about Twitter, Facebook, foursquare & Skype

[oohhboy]

That is an awful lot of RAM and pretty much overkill compared to how anemic the screen is in comparison. That thing is a real monster and it encompasses almost everything. It's like they formed a committee which sai "Can we throw it in?" and every time the engineer said yes, they did it regardless of cost or any other factor besides "If it's cool hip thing, do it".

That is the PS3 of handhelds and it's going to be expensive. I wonder how much Sony loses on each one?

[BlackNMild2k1]

According to the last comment from Sony

PS Vita NOT Being Sold For A Loss?
Atleast it won't be a significant one if one at all....
http://ie.psp.ign.com/articles/117/1177042p1.html

Yoshida: we capped our ambitions with a cost of goods target that we can profitably sell the hardware for $250.

To answer your question, we set out a goal: Yes, we're going to hit the $250 price, and no, we don't want to sell the hardware with a deficit. That's a goal we set out to do and I'm very happy we are achieving that.

IGN: So you're going to be profitable with each Vita sold?

Yoshida: We haven't completed the hardware development. It's like 98-percent done in terms of hardware, and on the system software side and network code, we have a few more months to work on that. We don't have the final-final answer to that question, but the way we are projecting it seems like we're going to do pretty well.

not much if anything at all.

[Chozo Ghost]

$250 may be their target and they may reach that target, but the 3DS sold very poorly at that price so how likely is it that the Vita will do any better?

[Ceric]

$250 may be their target and they may reach that target, but the 3DS sold very poorly at that price so how likely is it that the Vita will do any better?

The Big Question is:
Will there be a new Exclusive Monster Hunter when it launches?

[Chozo Ghost]

$250 may be their target and they may reach that target, but the 3DS sold very poorly at that price so how likely is it that the Vita will do any better?

The Big Question is:
Will there be a new Exclusive Monster Hunter when it launches?

For Nintendo's sake I really hope it won't be a Vita exclusive. If it is it will guarantee millions of units sold in Japan. Won't have much effect in other regions, though.

[Ceric]

$250 may be their target and they may reach that target, but the 3DS sold very poorly at that price so how likely is it that the Vita will do any better?

The Big Question is:
Will there be a new Exclusive Monster Hunter when it launches?

For Nintendo's sake I really hope it won't be a Vita exclusive. If it is it will guarantee millions of units sold in Japan. Won't have much effect in other regions, though.

That be better then the 3DS.