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There’s a line of thinking which argues PlayStation Vita will struggle on the market due to its inability to compete with smartphone gaming’s low price software model.
Not true, according to Sony’s US hardware marketing boss John Koller.
We view that as two separate demographics, and we’ve done a lot of quantitative and qualitative research to back this up,” he told GameSpot.
When you look at the type of consumer that’s playing cell phone games currently, it’s someone that enjoys smaller ‘kill time’ gaming and has not gravitated to the larger, richer, deeper experiences that true handheld gaming provides.
We’ve certainly seen that on the PSP. I can tell you that as we started looking at that product and the market opportunity several years ago, we saw a real strong demographic for those deeper, richer, console-type experiences.”
It’s a marketing line that Sony has peddled and is sticking to.
That ‘new ways to play’ idea, particularly for Vita, really differentiates from what’s available on mobile phones or tablets and, frankly, what will be available on those platforms over the next three to five years,” he insisted.
You’re going to see PS Vita expand what a lot of people believe to be true about handheld gaming, and you’re going to see a lot of those current mobile phone and tablet gamers come over to Vita. We’re very convinced of that.”
