PS Vita delayed, Nintendo 3DS gets price cut
The Playtation Vita, aka the PSP 2, has officially been delayed until 2012 in the US and Europe. The PS Vita has been mentioned on our site several times before due to its striking similarities to a tablet as far as specs go, and will no doubt compete with tablets for customers’ money if they’re looking for just a single portable entertainment device. That is especially true since the price of the Vita is rumored to be $250, which would put it right up there with the Nook Color and upcoming 7-inch tablets. With a delay until next year though, we’re going to go through an entire holiday season without the Vita on the market, which is no doubt going to hurt its adoption rate.
Speaking of adoption rates, the Nintendo 3DS hasn’t been selling very well, and is in the process of getting a nice price reduction to about 2/3 of the original price, meaning $170 in the US. This drastic price drop is confirmed to be due to bad sales, and we can only speculate in why it’s been selling rather badly. If you ask me, the fact that the 3D functionality is a gimmick like not other is some of the reason, while the rest can be attributed to the fact the thing uses last decade’s technology in a world where people’s telephones and books (ebook readers) offer thousands of games for much less money than any console game. Innovative gameplay was enough to sell devices back when the original DS came out, but a touch screen isn’t fancy anymore. Games that once sold out the world over – such as Brain Training and Nintendogs – have now been copied onto every single portable OS out there.
It will no doubt be interesting to see where both of these two consoles are in a year. On the gray side of the law, people are already playing Nintendo 64 and Playstation games on various mobile hardware using Bluetooth controllers, so it might only be a matter of time until game companies give up the portable consoles and start doing more premium mobile games instead. So far the big gap between dedicated consoles and tablets/phones has been the controls, and that is very easily fixable by any big company that wants in on the action.
[MSN Money via Pocket-Lint]
