Sony Will Lose Money on Vita Hardware Sales

[odBilal]

wasnt selling at a loss common once upon a time?

I think Nintendo is the only one out of the Big Three who sells Hardware and makes a profit out of it.

 

[WanderingFool]

i hope this works out for sony, i may not like them but this seems promising.
btw why do people keep bringing up playing on your phone, doesn't this appeal more to people who are more involved in gaming than playing angry birds and bejeweled?

Yeah, Smartphones and handheld gaming devices are two completely different things.

 

[Eiv]

id rather have a dedicated device for games. Gaming on my phone is nice, but not something i would like to do longterm.

 

[Korten12]

id rather have a dedicated device for games. Gaming on my phone is nice, but not something i would like to do longterm.

Vita isn't a phone, it doesn't even have phone capabilites.

 

[BabyRaptor]

I understand that they need to control the price to stay competitive, but should they really be pushing it THAT low? I'm sure they're losing money in light of the current hacking fiasco...

 

[Charmi the ninja]

The price announcement came as a huge surprise for me, cos i expected it to be a whole lot more at launch. I appreciate what sony is doing. I just hope they actually know what they are doing.
They will probably find another way to make up for their losses - probably through the price of the games for the Vita.

 

[Pendragon9]

So how are Sony the bad guys again?

If anything, Nintendo is even worse, making insane profit off all their products and STILL charging an arm and a leg for them.

 

[de5gravity]

I am just baffled by some of the comments here. Sony is not repeating the PS3 fiasco, and selling the Vita at launch at a low price, and you guys are not happy? It's not our job to worry about why Sony does whatever. As consumers, what matters to us is the end price point, and it's pretty good this time. "lost all respect for sony" what a joke.

Wow, and you would think these guys would actually learn from past mistakes. At times, when a company has large amounts of resources, they invest that resource poorly because they have so much of it (Look at Donald Trump). Releasing a handheld system when people are using smartphones more than ever is risky anyway, but to sell it without making a profit too, that's just ludicrous. You could make a substantial step up compared to the PSP and still sell it profitably. What's worse is, by the time they may become profitable, it'll be un underpowered peice of hardware again. If you look at the Xperia Play (the playstation phone), it is technically better than the PSP in ever single way, why not concentrate on that platform more?

I have no respect for these guys at all anymore. I haven't even gone to collect my free shit from the PSN outage, I'm completely over it.

How is Xperia Play better? It also does not have two sticks, it was not designed for real gaming, just Psone classics mostly. Smaller screen, and (duh) it's a phone! The battery life IF they had made it for intense gaming would be ridiculously short. You can't compare the Xperia Play and the Vita, they target different audiences.

 

[Spacewolf]

wasnt selling at a loss common once upon a time?

almost all car makers do it since they can make money back off the warrenty sony is presumably intending to do that with the games retail

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

wow color me interested, with some of hte game that will be coming out for it and dual joysticks finally make it to the handheld? hell yeah! this is gonna be a fucking steal around christmas time, i am quite excited to get my hand on this puppy and get some games


(it's backwards compatible with psp games i'm hoping?)

 

[geizr]

Losing money in the hardware units is typical of the business model for game consoles; the losses are made up later in license fees for sales of games. This is the way it has been for decades, now. The problem of the PS3 is the size of the losses per unit. I don't know how the Vita compares, percentage-wise.

However, I will say that Sony is going to need to make further investment to ensure the quality of game development on the device, otherwise they will simply find themselves hemorrhaging money for no good reason. Ultimately, people do not buy hardware with features. What they buy is the enablement to play games they enjoy. Excess hardware or features that are beyond what is necessary to manifest that enablement only serve to dissuade people from purchase due to extra expense for unwanted capabilities or, in some cases, disablement due to the extra complexities associated with additional features and capabilities(basically, it's harder to integrate everything together in a smooth, user-friendly fashion). To mitigate this, Sony will need to ensure that the games available for the system are of such caliber to override these considerations and make the device sufficiently appealing to the market. Put another way, the market is saturated with hand-helds(counting smart-phones and tablets), and people only have so much money and time. Sony will need to create a compelling reason beyond just spiffy new hardware to ensure success. The games have to be there, and the focus needs to be primarily on gaming.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Don't worry they will make it up in volume.

Seriously though this is a lost cause. Even 3DS was really too late. Smart phones and tablets have gotten both cheap and accepted enough that there is no longer a place for a dedicated portable gaming platform.

My prediction is the non-phone vita will totally flop.

 

[BrunDeign]

I want one of these so bad
I think I'll probably get one, but I might wait for a second generation, like they did with the PSP. Same with the 3DS - I'm waiting for the inevitable 3DS Lite.

I don't see how a 3DS Lite is even possible. The DS Lite was a smaller version of the current DS and I can tell you right now I definitely do NOT want a smaller 3DS.

Also does Sony realize that Nintendo is making, what, maybe 100 dollars profit on each sale of a 3DS? Nintendo certainly won't need 3 years to make a profit.

 

[VanTesla]

Is sony trying to bankrupt themselves?

 

[Kakashi on crack]

Considering that they packed more advanced hardware into the shell than the current-gen smartphones, and those still retail at $600-$700 off-contract, selling at a loss is the only way to be remotely competitive. The real question is more how much of a loss are they taking.

I'd lower that to 250-400 for a 3G phone smartphone off-contract, then you'd be pretty accurate. I think you're thinking 4G smartphones.

Anyways, I really don't see the point in the vita since everything smart-phone-wise is going to be switching over to 4G in the next couple years, so that by the time Sony even hits the profit margin they'll have to release a new one.

Yeah... I'll stick with my Commando phone thank yah very much.

 

[wammnebu]

Wow, and you would think these guys would actually learn from past mistakes. At times, when a company has large amounts of resources, they invest that resource poorly because they have so much of it (Look at Donald Trump). Releasing a handheld system when people are using smartphones more than ever is risky anyway, but to sell it without making a profit too, that's just ludicrous. You could make a substantial step up compared to the PSP and still sell it profitably. What's worse is, by the time they may become profitable, it'll be un underpowered peice of hardware again. If you look at the Xperia Play (the playstation phone), it is technically better than the PSP in ever single way, why not concentrate on that platform more?

I have no respect for these guys at all anymore. I haven't even gone to collect my free shit from the PSN outage, I'm completely over it.

the smart phone craze is precisely why they are taking a loss for the PSV.
they have to keep the price low so that people would be willing to buy it along side their smart-phone, so they artificially lowered the price

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

-_-

Sony, Sony, Sony...

Have you learned nothing from Nintendo?

They have won the handheld market time and time again with hardware that is far below the technical abilities of their rivals. They always had better battery times, better support from third parties, their always selling first party games (mostly Mario Kart), always make money on every system sold, and now it looks like Nintendo is trying to figure out ways to bridge the gap between their 3DS and the WiiU. You LOST your last attempt at that. STOP.

YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME.

 

[Photocopier]

I'm confused by all the people saying sony have lost the handheld market. I seriously wanted the 3DS until the NGP (now PSV obviously) was announced. I'm definitely going to buy this and lots of the games too.