PS Vita not coming to US in 2011

[MarioMania]

No, sir. Apple owns the handheld market.

The ipod, ipad or any Apple Products dosen't count

[Icarus Moonsight]

Not out-of-the-box, sure. But you can download an app that enables it to count.

[MarioMania]

Will the PSV have a UMD for games??

[Icarus Moonsight]

Nope. But that is a good thing regarding system failures and battery life.

[MarioMania]

How can it survive with only downloadable games??

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

How can it survive with only downloadable games??

Because it won't only have downloadable games.

It won't have UMDs, it will have games on cartridges.

[MarioMania]

That looks like a DS Card....

[The 1 2 P]

I didn't think of this before, and while others have mentioned it, 12P's post also mentioning it was probably pushed back because of the launch line up, it finally hit me.

It's not the current launch line up, it's what's due to release in months towards the end of the year. Uncharted 3, Dark Souls, Batman Arkham City, and Skyrim are some big titles coming out right at the end of the year. The Vita's main fanbase is the core gamer rather than the casual, so releasing during the same time the biggest games of the year are released would cut into sales for both those games as well as the Vita.

The few extra months to pad the Vita launch line up also helps, but it's the western developed AAA titles being released at the end of the year they decided to go with Japan rather than other territories.

I hate to agree with you but thats also most likely true. Last year was an awesome year in gaming, one of the best ever. But this year we are getting a new Halo, Uncharted, Resistance, Gears of War, COD, Battlefield, Arkham City, GOW collection and atleast a half dozen others. Any system that launched during the holidays this year would have trouble competing with that. And it's not just PS3 gamers that were interested in buying the Vita, it's gamers who own any or all systems. So Sony holding back in the US is a pretty wise decision after all. But their launch line up would have sucked too and that also hurts your sales.

[WCP]

It's not backwards... It's called best foot forward. The Vitas success in Japan is much clearer and predictable than anywhere else. That's all, and fairly obvious.

Ok, so, you have millions of consumers in Japan that are perfectly happy with their PSP's, and they are buying software on a regular basis for said PSP. You only have enough Vita's to launch in one major market, so you launch in Japan, to an audience of people that are already happy with what they have?

Yeah, that makes TONS of sense.

[Bojay1997]

Ok, so, you have millions of consumers in Japan that are perfectly happy with their PSP's, and they are buying software on a regular basis for said PSP. You only have enough Vita's to launch in one major market, so you launch in Japan, to an audience of people that are already happy with what they have?

Yeah, that makes TONS of sense.

Of course it makes sense and that's how Sony and Nintendo have both operated up until very recently with great success. The PSOne was released almost nine months earlier in Japan than North America and the PS2 was released some seven months earlier in Japan. It has only been in this current generation that simultaneous or fairly close release dates of hardware in all three major regions have been a regular thing.

Just because on older product is selling well and still remains popular doesn't mean that owners of that product are going to reject the new product. In fact, those are the very consumers who are most likely to buy the new product and the easiest to market to. Japanese consumers also tend to be early adopters who don't get as upset about a poor launch line-up based on previous launches and tend to be very loyal to brands they are familiar with and enjoy.

[Icarus Moonsight]

3DS is on shelf with DSLite, DSi and DSiXL

PSV will be on the shelf with PSPGo and PSP3000 (at least initially)

If PSV performs well in a JPN launch, that will help the launches in other regions. Launching in a less demanding region to start you risk falling on the wrong side of that, where it works against you instead.