Sony may not have reached the expected sales figure with the retailing of its current age handheld PlayStation Vita, but that doesn’t mean that the company will lose all hope in the device and stop its sale.
According to reports, Sony UK’s MD and VP Fergal Gara, recently speaking at the Eurogamer Expo, stated that Sony will continue its support for the Vita handheld, while also hinting that the next killer app could be developed for the system.
“Some people have been critical of PS Vita, and if it wasn’t for the fact that lots of gamers really, really enjoy it, and the feedback has been very good on the device, maybe we’ve been a little less confident. But of course there have been concerns that we’ve progressed from,” Gara stated.
“Chief concerns were the cost of the system and the cost of games. The cost of the machine; it’s now selling in the UK at £50-70 less than it was a year ago, and it’s growing year-on-year. We’re really pleased. It’s been hard work, but we’ve got there.”
Taking the center stage at the event, Gara stated that as far as the price of games are concerned, titles are now releasing at a lower price than they were a year ago. Moreover, there’s also “the option to purchase Mega Packs which come with up to 10 games and a memory card contained within the price of the console – for free.”
“Also, there’s the fact that PlayStation Plus offers an instant game collection across three platforms now, and with the launch of PlayStation 4 in November, it too will be included,” VG247 states.
However, with the upcoming launch of the new PlayStation 4, Sony is also betting big on remote play features between PS Vita and PS4. And this is a feature Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida wants all first-party games to have.
“The potential killer app might well be the remote play with PlayStation 4,” he said. “For example, Watch Dogs is playable on PS Vita over wi-fi and that is very, very exciting. To say we should write-off PS Vita … absolutely not. We’re hitting the numbers we want to hit today. We’re pleased, it’s very ambitious going into the big season,” Gara added.
Sony’s PlayStation 4 is currently scheduled to release on Nov. 15 in North America and Nov. 29, 2013 in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
