Sony Confused, Says 3DS Success a "Good Sign"

success is mainly due to a price cut which, so far, Sony has no plans of attempting.

And of course, everyone who wants a new handheld has already had plenty of chance to buy the cheaper DS. A successful competitor is still a competitor.

Ah, I remember early in the PS3's tenure, Sony kept shooting themselves in the foot with almost everything they said or did. Some things just don't seem to change. I highly doubt the PSV is going to move much at all until the first price cut comes... They needn't match the 3DS' $179US MSRP, but bringing it at least to $199US would be required. That's a pretty "magical" barrier, second, of course, only to the $99US barrier. If someone could make a competitively-potent handheld gaming device that bested all those phones, (which really, are mostly limited to FarmVille and Angry Birds anyway) and price it at $99, it'd sell like candy... Or like Nintendo's prior handhelds.

How do you sell a fraction of a 3DS? I bet you accidentally omitted a "million" there.

hi. is that ture that cellphone games such as angry bird and talking tom. are these games for zombie gamer?

Nintendo should stick with handhelds and drop out of the console market. We'll let them have one last "Go Around" with the Wii U.

My bet is they will follow Nintendo's way:Milk the early adopters then after 2-3 months will cut prices with 50-70 bucks.

The Wii was a massive success, it opened up a different market no one thought was there. It's outsold the PS3 with 24million units being sold vs the PS3's 19million. The DS was another massive hit, not so much on the 3ds but i'd they were doing the best when compared with their competitors.

Does the Xperia Arc Play sell in Japan?

The only thing the handheld gaming device need to beat Andriod/iOS smartphones are battery life. it is their biggest weakpoint now.

Nobody is going to like the idea of gaming 1-2hours only to know the battery life gone. Which most casual gamers easily reach that timeframe.

Is there a compelling reason for them to do so? The Wii *did* take a solidly first-place finish in the 7th generation: at this point, there is zero chance that either the PS3 or Xbox 360 will ever catch up to it; total sales are more than 56% greater than the Xbox 360, the closest competitor.

If you're going to make a comment about "kids games," I honestly don't really see them any more than on the 360 or PS3. All of them have Call of Duty, all have their own exclusive shooters. And about graphics? The Wii's graphics are sufficient enough; no one complained about the weaker original Xbox... And both the PS3 and 360 are embarrassingly weak compared to a PC; by now netbooks surpass them readily. (pretty much any of AMD's Fusion APUs is a more powerful gaming setup than either the 360 or PS3)

I have a feeling that tablets may kill off the hand held market; or at least drastically reduce the number of players.

Any opinion on that ?

You forgot to state that as of 12/31/11 the 3DS had sold over 4 million in America & over 4.5 million in Japan. It is picking up momentum thanks to new titles like Mario Kart 7, mario 3D land, Starfox, an upgraded eshop & Demos as of yesterday.

Far as I am concerned 3D is another gimmick and is even worse of one on a small device. If it was any good Apple would have jumped onboard and so would have the other console makers.
The statistics I read is that gaming software was down 24% last year. That's a huge drop year over year! That tells me the gimmicks are not working and the gaming manufactures need to reduce prices especially on software or risk losing even more.

Usercommenting Guys says, "1.65 3DS?! HA THAT WRONG!"
Me says, "Grow up. There's no chance in hell you are just pointing that out to feel good that you caught such a 'major' editing mistake. Everyone knows it's 1.65m 3DS sold.

$250 or $300 forPSP vita or PS3...
or PSP or 3ds

not really a hard choice

They really should have launched it in the US first, Japan is still quite happy with the PSP which is selling more, has better games (in terms of type or uniqueness) coming out for it - the west was begging (or at least a little pumped for the Vita and gets stuffed again.

Let me just say, MOBILE GAMING SUCKS!

Anything other than rudimentary games like Angry Birds, just don't work well at all on mobile. After owning an iPhone for a long time, I just can't get into gaming on my phone. Vita looks awesome and could be a big hit, but the price needs to come down.

Sorry but most people play games on their phones because they are available and the games are abundant, not because a phone is an awesome gaming device. The very definition of a mobile gamer = casual gamer. There is still room for a device for "real" gamers.

I'm glad you're not heading nintendo, you would've driven them to bankruptcy. That's like ASUS dropping motherboards, who in the right mind would drop their successful moneymaking line because a few so-called "real gamers" think their products aren't right for them?

Unless you are in line at the DMV or such

I was never into console games growing up. I had an old atari, moved up to the SNES (when n64 came out lol), and then moved up to the PS2 (when the PS2 slim came out), and then was given a Wii when it first came out as a present. The ONLY system which I got much use out of (and still use from time to time) is the PS2 (even if just for the DVD player feature). It had great/cheap games (which I still play from time to time), the price was right ($120 bundle with a few games, memory card, and extra controller), and it was entertaining, while looking good on the TVs available at the time.
Today we have crap like the Wii (which I thought innovative, but never found a fun/involving game for), and then we have overpriced crap like the x360 and PS3 which look much better (though not great), but also lack in the 'fun games' department.
Seriously, when are game companies going to realize that we don't want games to look 'real'; we want them to be fun and different! I just got into the new Tribes beta, and they are on to something. The game looks terrible (well, maybe that is a little harsh, but it's way back on dx9c tech), and it is incomplete (thus the beta status), but I have not had this much 'fun' playing a game (much less an FPS, which is not my genre of choice) since the old UT2K3/4 days! No need to over-complicate the game mechanics, just have a bunch of people moving at 100mph out on a field with interesting weapons blowing the b-jesus out of each-other! It's fun! Just like Mario Kart (the only fun game I found on the wii). It does not need to be complicated, or look amazing, it just needs to be fun and interesting. Playing a game where you are walking around a map and your greatest strategy is to hide behind indestructible chest-high walls is not what I call fun.

Lastly, I now have a kid, and while I have a few years before he will be playing video games, I am already looking at what is available and what will be available for him to grow up on. I know for me games were a ton of fun (video games, board games, sports, etc., All types of games!). They teach you creativity within boundaries, how to analyse systems, how to see how other people think/problem solve, etc. I really hope that with the new motion tech, and other input methods coming down the pipe that games become much more interesting than the button mashing/arm flailing that they have turned into today. I firmly believe that good games are the key to taping into intelligence, especially in boys who do not tend to do well in the school system (lol, I know I didn't, and it wasn't for lack of intelligence).

We bought two lite versions for the kids, play them constantly. Still no games on mobile devices that compete against Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong, imho.

if they added phone functionallity to it

it would fly off the shelfs

What they really should have done is make a Playstation controller attachment for a Playstation Tablet computer.

The 3DS could have been much more successful if Nintendo would have avoided releasing the DSi and DSi XL just under a year before. Families who bought the DSi prior to the 3DS either had no funds or did not find a need to buy another one just for 3D capability.

I think the 3DS's price definitely helped things. I went to get a DS for a gift for someone that had games and a dying DS, and the 3DS is only $10-20 more than a DS. Might as well get the 3DS

Sony also has a hard time launching platforms

The price is too high. I mean, when your absurdly expensive device is more expensive than Apple's competing absurdly expensive device, perhaps you've pressed too far. Especially when said device is a platform from which you'll glean lots of software sales.

Selling the Vita at $250 is idiotic.

Also idiotic, is selling what is essentially a 32GB MicroSD card for $100. Market price on a class 10 32GB MicroSD card is about 40 dollars, first of all. Selling what is essentially the same thing for $100 is robbery. Of course, it's also completely ridiculous as a strategy, since it'll force users into lower capacity SD cards, resulting in, lower software sales.

Does Sony want to sell games, apps, and other content on their Vita? Or just get a small amount of early adopter hardware sales before 3rd party software developers abandon ship, and leave Vita for dead?

Also, who decided 3 hours of battery life was sufficient? Cuz, I'd just like to take them for a nice scenic walk through this.... dark alley.

Currently the prices are:
PSV: $250
Games: $50
MemoryCard 16gb :$70

Total costs just to play one game is waaay too high. Total costs should be in the sub $300 range.

And another thing, its not something i'll carry around just to have a game or two while i'm standing in line somewhere. For me to get a chance to play, I'd have to plan ahead or take the train or something.

if sony will not cut the psv price, then history will gonna repeat itself.

sony epic fail -1 still can't get my credit fixed fku

What's wrong with PSP? The games are expensive. Many are overly complicated good looking boring games. A huge number of decent games are in Japanese only. And the analog stick sucks.

Although you made some good points, you claims on hardware are flatout false. The PS3 has roughly a GeForce 7800GT, which is about 50% of an 8800GT. A 7800GT thoroughly stomps a Radeon 6380G, which is the best thing you'll find in an AMD netbook: http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 085-7.html

Nevertheless, a 7800GT is ridiculously anemic for anything attempting to call itself a primary gaming platform.