PlayStation Vita: Failing Before Hitting Our Shores

We are just over a month away from Sony releasing their successor to the PlayStation Portable, the PlayStation Vita and all eyes are set on Japan.  Last month, the PS Vita was released in Sony's home country of Japan and gamers here have been looking at its performance their to see if it will do well in North America.  In its first two days, the PS Vita sold a good 325 thousand systems.  Since then sales have taken a complete nosedive only selling an additional 72,479 systems leading up to Christmas.  New sales figures for the last week of 2011 have not been released yet, but things are not looking good for Sony's new handheld juggernaut, which .  Is the low sales just a slow start for the PS Vita or is this handheld destined to become just as sad and pathetic as the PSP?

The reason the PSP flew off shelves in Japan is the Monster Hunter games made for the system.  For one reason or another the Monster Hunter series has become a blockbuster franchise in Japan much like Dragon Quest.  Any system that has its own Monster Hunter game will immediately fly off of store shelves.  Just watch when Monster Hunter 3G releases in Japan later this year.  The lack of a big blockbuster Japanese franchise could be a reason that the sales for the PS Vita have been so low for the first few weeks.  Other possible reasons for the PS Vita's low sales numbers could be the appeal of the 3DS, which is considerably cheaper than the Vita or the price of the memory cards, which could run you 100 dollars or more, and are required to play and download games and not included with the system itself.

With the North American release of the PS Vita just over a month away, hopefully Sony can fix the woes they are having in Japan and have a successful launch.  Just remember no major video game hardware launch be it a console or handheld is perfect, there will always be problems just go back and look at every hardware launch in the last ten years.  The thing with the poor sales in Japan is that it is the Vita's home country, if it is not selling well there then how is going to sell well anywhere else?  Only time will tell, but things are not looking good for Sony.