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Nintendo's legendary game designer comments on the Vita's struggle, and how Sony could learn from the 3DS's launch mistakes.
It's been a tough road for Sony's newly launched PlayStation Vita. Amid dismal sales figures and a lackluster software library, the handheld is having trouble finding its footing. Speaking from his own experience with the 3DS launch, legendary Nintendo developer Shigeru Miyamoto believes he knows why the Vita is struggling.
"It's obviously a very hi-spec machine, and you can do lots of things with it," he said of the Vita in a recent interview with Edge. "But I don't really see the combination of software and hardware that really makes a very strong product."
Following its decent launch, Vita sales have severely stalled. The system is fairly consistently being outsold by the Wii, which is facing its own software shortage during its last year of prominence, and even the PSP is beating it on a weekly sales basis. On the other hand, the 3DS has topped the Japanese hardware charts ever since its price cut last August. Why the slow start then the huge boom? According to Miyamoto, it all comes back to software.
"When we launched the 3DS hardware we didn't have Super Mario 3D Land, we didn't have Mario Kart 7, we didn't have Kid Icarus: Uprising," he said. "We were striving to have all of these ready for the launch, but we weren't able to deliver them at that time."
Miyamoto goes on to say that Nintendo thought people would be willing to invest in the 3DS hardware because they found it promising, but that this was a faulty assumption. "Looking back we have to say we realize the key software was missing when we launched the hardware."
It's been a tough road for Sony's newly launched PlayStation Vita. Amid dismal sales figures and a lackluster software library, the handheld is having trouble finding its footing. Speaking from his own experience with the 3DS launch, legendary Nintendo developer Shigeru Miyamoto believes he knows why the Vita is struggling.
"It's obviously a very hi-spec machine, and you can do lots of things with it," he said of the Vita in a recent interview with Edge. "But I don't really see the combination of software and hardware that really makes a very strong product."
Following its decent launch, Vita sales have severely stalled. The system is fairly consistently being outsold by the Wii, which is facing its own software shortage during its last year of prominence, and even the PSP is beating it on a weekly sales basis. On the other hand, the 3DS has topped the Japanese hardware charts ever since its price cut last August. Why the slow start then the huge boom? According to Miyamoto, it all comes back to software.
"When we launched the 3DS hardware we didn't have Super Mario 3D Land, we didn't have Mario Kart 7, we didn't have Kid Icarus: Uprising," he said. "We were striving to have all of these ready for the launch, but we weren't able to deliver them at that time."
Miyamoto goes on to say that Nintendo thought people would be willing to invest in the 3DS hardware because they found it promising, but that this was a faulty assumption. "Looking back we have to say we realize the key software was missing when we launched the hardware."