PlayStation Vita Faces Fierce Competition from Game-Friendly Smartphones, Report

Sony's PlayStation Vita inactive has several months earlier information technology's released in the Integrated States — but that hasn't curbed a duet of video game developers from foreseeing the next-gen handheld's loser, dubbing it a "car wrack."

Steep Iron Studios' Lyle Hall and Matthew Seymour told GamesIndustry.game (registration required) that the PlayStation Vita will have a rough sledding competing with a market that's soppy with casual games packed into smartphones.

(See Attendant: Active with Sony's PlayStation Vita: Impressive Hardware, Game Play)

Hall contrasted the PlayStation Vita's eventual launch (coming to Japan later this year and arriving in the US and Europe proto 2020) therewith of Nintendo's 3DS, which was plagued with dismal sales, forcing Nintendo to slash the price of the 3DS away almost incomplete, from $250 to $170, inferior than five months after the handheld hit shelves.

"If people aren't willing to fund $249 for a Nintendo 3DS, wherefore would they pay $299 for Vita?" Hall told GamesIndustry.biz. The PlayStation Vita comes in two flavors: $299 for the Wi-Fi and 3G (which is power-driven by AT&T) version, and $249 for the Wi-Fi only version.

Though sales of the Nintendo 3DS have soared in Japanese Archipelago since the price cutting, having to cut the price in the first berth — a mere fivesome months after found — is an embarrassment, if not a dismal omen, to the hand-held gaming industry, and Sony may have to cause the similar with the Vita.

"People don't deprivation to acquit much one thing in their sac, that's why Android and iPhone have done so well, they are the devices of choice, they offer multiple functions outside of gaming," Hall said.

Sony as wel hasn't had much luck new in the handheld market. Sony's successor to the original PSP, the PSP Go, struggled with meager sales and had its retail price reduced to move on the face of it unmovable units. And atomic number 3 games on the iPhone and iPad made king-size bucks, the PSP Go was out of print to a lesser extent than two years after its release.

Foyer and Jane Seymour too compare the Vita to assumedly poor gross sales of the PlayStation phone, the Xperia Play, though that's a little off the mark since the Xperia Play is a phone and consequently supports multiple functions.

You may be wondering where two dudes who pump out UFC Fighting titles and forgettable moving-picture show standoff-in games stupefy off damning the Vita to failure. The answer is they aren't … necessarily. Hall added that the Vita's "engineering is sweet," simply that his harsh statements fall from the perspective that gaming devices are expiration the way many believe single-function e-readers are bicephalous. "I can't see why you would lack to put a device proscribed that only does games," Hall aforesaid.

Whether you believe there's a market for gaming handhelds anymore, or whether you think the dudes at Heavy Branding iron Studios are full of IT, leastwise they only said car wreck, not train wrack.