Strangely, i agree with one of the senior execs at Sony... feels dirty.

Japanese sales have always been a poor predictor for other markets. Unfortunately for Sony, it's historically been in the other direction. Things that sell incredibly well in Japan tend not to do as well in the west. In this case, I think the Vita was designed by Japanese engineers to appeal to Japanese consumers, and it hasn't done that so far.

Generally, electronics that are designed to appeal to the japanese tend to do poorly in the west. So we'll see how it goes. I can say that I was very interested in buying a Vita at one point, but lost interest when i found out about some of the stupider decisions they made in the design.