Vita IS a triple-A machine in Japan but Western future remain unclear, Sony says

Sony is confident about the Vita’s future prospects in Japan, but is less certain about its place in the Western market.

The handheld routinely vies it out with 3DS for supremacy in the weekly Japanese hardware charts. The story is completely different in the UK, however, where weekly sales are minimal.

The platform holder has previously said triple-A economics aren’t viable for the device and that users can expect fewer first party titles for Vitas in the future.

This might not be the case, however. In Japan at least Sony now argues triple-A can be viable. The West is a very different story.

In fact, SCE president Andrew House has suggested to IGN that the machine may simply not be suitable for the region full stop.

I certainly think you’ll still see Vita as a triple-A machine in Japan where it has a different function with the console dynamic of the marketplace,” he said. That for me is a given.

It’s hard to say in terms of the other markets. I think Remote Play is still in its nascent stages, I think we need to have better understanding. We know a lot of players are embracing it and using it and seem to like the experience a lot, but necessarily that changes the dynamic.”

Can the streaming of PS4 games on the handheld plug the triple-A gap on the machine? Is there even still a demand for portable triple-A games? Is asking consumers to pay 150+ for a portable console when nearly all of them have a very viable games machine already sitting in their pocket in the form of a smartphone?