If you've been following coverage of the PS Vita over in Japan, you probably already know that even though they started off fantastic, the numbers seem to be getting lower and lower every week. During the 5th week of 2012, the Vita sales were at a steady 17,000 which seems like a low number but according to the President of Sony's Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, it is apparently within their expectation.
In a recent interview with GameInformer, he was pressed with the hard question of what he thinks about the PS Vita sales and how they seem to dropping from week to week. He responded with "In terms of sales, yes. But it’s within our expectation. It didn’t hit our highest expectations, however." It's interesting that even though these numbers seem so low, they seem to be within what was expected.
Although his response might not be a 100% genuine, since the PSP seemed to sell a lot better during its release. His full response was:
In terms of sales, yes. But it’s within our expectation. It didn’t hit our highest expectations, however. From that standpoint it’s disappointing. But when you look at the market in Japan today, it’s a very strong portable market as you know, and the PSP is still very strong and lots of new games come out for it. So PSP is still very relevant. And of course 3DS had the perfect storm of top quality games for Christmas with the reduced price.
Considering all of that, with the numbers we have seen in terms of sell–through, I am very happy.
If there is one thing absolutely certain about Japan, is that they thrive on handhelds, so his statement is very true, but the fact that the PSP remains so popular, even though better hardware is currently available, Sony might have to pull of some drastic move similar to Nintendo's with their massive price drop of the 3DS, right before the amazing first party games hit store shelves.
Of course, we still haven't factored in the future sales in the US of next week's first edition bundle, and the official release coming on February 22nd. With games that will undoubtedly appeal more towards US gamers like Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Wipeout 2048, we might just see the sales skyrocketing over here in the States.
