Topic: Should Sony change their approach on the Vita?

Why would genre dictate whether a game is generic or not.  So there are no generic RPGs, no generic Adventure games, only generic platformers?  Do you mean linear, I can agree to that.  Mario games are often linear, but so is Uncharted so...

Sorry, I cannot explain it with better words. Mario is not a game, it is a character used for many mini games, it is a generic character for all of them. And all of them are not in-depth of any genre, or not enough to create detractors. Mario Karts is a fast paced driving simple simulator that will appeal to most people just because it is not an indepth "hardcore" racing simulator, same applies to Mario Tennis or to the Marios RPGs, etc. Marios are not in any extreme, so they sell well everywhere, in the west and in japan.

@Mandoble Oh, I get what you mean then.  He's just a character that appeals to everyone due to his games lacking complexity that other games have.  That makes sense.
When I think of Mario I think of the platformers, but when you put it that way it sort of makes sense with what you're trying to say.
Let's get back to the topic at hand now guys.  It's kind of derailed.

This is not as derailed as you might think. Years ago, in the middle of the fight between Sega and Nintendo, both companies decided that having an iconic and generic character for their games would be a great option as at the end it would be the character what sells, not the games. So you have Mario and Sonic, both of them present in many type of games. Imagine Mario Kart without Mario, imagine it just with Miis as Wii Sport Resort, would it be selling the same? No. Sony has a representative but not yet iconic character with Sackboy, they should promote it as much as possible. Perhaps having Sackboy as the main character of Tearaway would have been the best option.

@Mandoble You know, "mascot" is probably a better word for them then "generic character".  A mascot is someone who represents a franchise.  All of the ones that people actually notice aren't generic.  A generic character would be a person.  Think  of the Warrior in Final Fantasy 1.  That's a generic character.  Or a Mii, like you said.
Mario and Sonic aren't generic.  They happen to have a design that works for many different kinds of games.  Generic mascot is something that shouldn't be redundent; if a mascot is generic, there needs to be work done in fixing that.

I agree that Sony should really try to show off Sackboy more.  They're doing LBP Karting, so that's a step up.  I also find him to be a bit cooler then that cat thing that they have for a mascot in Japan (I think its name is Toro).

A generic character is a character used for many different type of games, call it mascot if you find Mario would get offended if called generic, while in my dictionary mascot has no relation at all with that. An specialized and non generic character is that one that you find only in one specific game or type of games. Your fanboyatic defense of Mario is a bit alarming, you know?

BTW,
"The thing is, they are all extremely similar to their cosole brethren, and even though they are not the same games, it won't matter to most people."

Why you dont apply the same to all Marios present in 3DS? Or is that MK7, MLand or MTennis are so different than these for the Wii/NGC? They are in fact mini-extractions of the corresponding Wii or GameCube games, even so they sell well. So if this works well between 3DS and Wii why it should work bad between Vita and PS3?

This seems to be an argument of semantics, let's just let it go.

As for Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7, being similar and lesser variations of the console counterparts... they really aren't.  Super Mario 3D Land plays a lot differently than Galaxy 1+2 and was made with the 3DS specifically.  Mario Kart 7, while being similar to Mario Kart Wii is actually better than its previous entries.

I'll use Uncharted GA as an example on Vita.  It doesn't change the gameplay enough to differentiate it from the originals like Super Mario 3D Land, nor is it the best entry in the series like Mario Kart 7.  If Naughty Dog had designed Golden Abyss and made it the definitive entry in the series, I can guarantee you Vita would be in a very different position than it is now.

What an extreme example of cinism, Uncharted GA doesnt play different? Same happens between 1, 2 and 3 for PS3, all the Elder Scroll games play the same as well, so for you are the same game, right? All these games are based on different stories and scenaries, not on different game mechanics. SM3DL is just a nano version of Galaxy and BTW way way worse than the Galaxy series, same happens with MK7 or Mario Tennis or Pilot wings, all are mini extractions of the originals, the only exception are OOT and Starfox, which are simply direct ports of N64 games, just cheap ways to do fast money. It is frankly incredible that all the Nintendo fanboys see that perfect for 3DS but a catastrofic faillure for Vita.

Mandoble, this thread isn't about which system is better.  I made this thread because I was worried that the approach that Sony was going for wouldn't work well enough for the Vita to succeed like it should.  Making console games on a handheld is nice, but every person I've talked to just isn't interested in the system for games like that, except for one of my friends who bought it and is now having buyer's remorse.  The way I see it, it doesn't matter that the Vita is a better device (and it is a better device); Nintendo's strategy is flat out working better than Sony's right now, and I'm worried that due to low sales not enough devs will make games for the system, and nobody wants that.

You're right, Uncharted 3 plays a lot like 2 which plays a lot like the original.  So why did you buy them?  Because they were bigger and better than the previous entry in every way.  Would you have bought Skyrim if it was worse?  Maybe, if you're a fan but I doubt you would buy a brand new system to do so.  People expect sequels to be better than the originals when it comes to video games.  Otherwise, why buy a newer entry for a lesser experience. 

With Super Mario 3D Land, Nintendo changed the formula enough so that it didn't feel like Galaxy lite but rather a new unique experience (it didn't hurt that the developers of Galaxy were the people behind it.)  And MK7 is in no way a nano version of MK Wii seeing as it is bigger and better than it in nearly every way.

Take a look at the big Vita games coming out this Christmas, AC3:L and CoD:BO:D.  CoD looks like what you're describing, a nano version of the console games.  However, AC looks more like Super Mario 3D Land.  In that, I mean it will likely not be as good as AC3, but it looks different enough to warrant a purchase. 

Might be you are mixing threads and sites here. Here Im not talking about which one is better. Th e very same policy used by Nintendo (which has not released any single original game for the 3DS with the possible exception of KI) is what you label as a big mistake for the Vita. And you are wrong, PS3 has no Uncharted GA, and Uncharted GA is a different game than the others (might be MGalaxy1 and 2 are the same game?), and even if they are the same that would still be outstanding, do you imagine a Vita with the very same game catalog as the PS3? And this is the direction Sony wants to take with the cross play/cross pay, which is an excellent strategy.

Have you not read all of my posts?  Here, this is why I think it's a bad idea for Sony and not Nintendo, from my first post.

I think this because the Vita sales haven't been great.  The 3DS was doing better at this point despite having less games, and I think the above reason is why.  It sucks that demographics are the reason, but it's just harder to get people who have less time on their hands a reason to get the Vita.

Here's why I don't think cross-play is what should be the core of Sony's strategy like they're doing right now:

Those two points combined showcases the majority of my thesis.  You can feel free to disagree with me, but don't call me a fanboy because the 3DS happens to cater more towards the audience that plays more portable gaming devices.

I don't think it's wrong to go for console games on a handheld, but I do think it's wrong to just go for that, at least for the audience the device is aimed at.

I do read your post, and the same you apply for Sony, you dont want to apply for Nintendo, because the parents are these adults playing with their kids on the big TV to Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, WSR, Super Mario Bros or Galaxy. Why this is bad for Sony but good for Nintendo? For the same reason, why to buy a 3DS if you have all the enhanced versions of these games for the Wii?

And cross play is not about playing the same game on Vita and on PS3, but to use the Vita as controller running complementary extra parts of the PS3 game (or addons) on it, and this doesnt mean to buy the game twice.

What games have released that utilize the Vita as a controller?  The only examples of cross-play I've seen that actually seem to do more then just streaming games is transfarring stuff.  Which is awesome in its own right, but I pointed out in my comment why that might not entice people to buy a Vita.

If you don't get why I'm not applying the same reasoning to Nintendo, I don't know what more I can do to explain to you the flaws in Sony's strategy except for this: the sales of the Vita right now are approximately around 2.5 million, take some leave some.  The 3DS's sales at around the same time were 6 million, but this was the month where the price drop occured, so I'll take off 1 million for you, so that makes it around 5 million, 2X the amount the Vita has.  The 3DS was the same price as the Vita, with its games at the same price, with way less quality games, yet it was doing twice as better.  Mario Kart 7 and Mario 3D Land had yet to come out.  You can't put it on advertising, because the 3DS had barely any advertising until the arrival of the Christmas season.  You can't put it on stuff coming out on the horizon, because Gamescom just happened, showing off a ton of great stuff, yet I see no true surge in sales.
Why in the world could the Vita be doing so poorly when the 3DS had *more* against it?  The reasons I highlighted through my posts are the best things I can come up with.  If you don't agree, fine, but I don't know how I can point out why it works for Nintendo but not for Sony more then I already have.

I want the Vita to be a success.  It's not going to happen at the rate it's going at right now.  I'd love to think Sony will be fine, it has money, but it's stock is doing horrible right now.  Over the course of a year and a half, the stock of Sony has plummetted.  On March 2 of 2011, Sony's stock was at 36.36 a share.  Now it is about 12 a share.  In that short amount of time its stock was divided by 3.  Having a high-profile device not do well at the same time is not good.  Let's not forget that a PS4 is going to come out eventually, and that's going to be a money hole for a little while as well.  If people continue to not buy the device, and Sony's stock keeps on dropping, what are they going to do with the device?  Let's not forget that they're also a multimedia company, so there's costs in those departments too.

If there was nothing wrong with the way Sony was handling the Vita, there'd be sales to back it up.

None yet, you are talking about remote play, which is unrelated to cross play. Cross play was announced past week at Gamescom and it was demostrated with LBP PS3. There you have the Vita as game controller, and you can use all the extra control posibilities that you dont have with the PS3 (touchscreen, back touch pad, camera and giros), you can use the camera to look for hidden things in the main screen, you can use the touch control to move blocks in the main screen, you have a different display in your vita showing different things than in the main screen and you have specific puzzles that were run completely on the Vita. It is not any remote play, it is a new feature were you use both devices to work together in a complementary way. Same as WiiU if you like. Cross play support is an excellent move from Sony, the same as cross buy, but Sony needs to give much more visibility to these two new posibilities through clear commercials.

And two more things, 3DS sells better because it is much better known by the people, and it is way cheaper for these few that know both consoles. The first is something that Sony can fix, the second they cannot, they have no room at the moment to proceed with a price drop. They already said that one of their main objetives is to find effective ways to reduce the building cost of the device and later proceed with a price drop, something that might happen next year.

And finally, while they are not reaching the expected sales for the Vita, they have unprecedented success with the PS3. Sony Computer Entertainment is not doing bad at all, but that will have little impact on the devaluation of the company due to the collapse of their main TV divisions. Sony will not die or survive because of the Vita, even if they reach 10M sales that would have little impact at the end.

I can't see a game being made that would only utilize cross-play, though.  Such an endeavor would require a publisher to take in an extremely small amount of people that would potentially buy it, and even something like porting WiiU games could be pretty risky.  It's a nice thing to have, but I don't think people are just going to buy the system for something like that.

Currently, yeah, but when it was just 3DS and no Vita was around, it was doing better then the Vita despite having pretty much no software.  I don't think a lack of advertising is the only reason the system isn't doing well.
As for the price drop, they could drop the price on those memory cards.  The price on those things is a universal complaint, and considering that they aren't even high quality, at least from impressions when compared to high quality SD cards, I highly doubt they wouldn't make a killing on them if they were at half off.  If we're talking price drops on the system, they could do price drops based on territory.  The Vita costs $250 in the U.S. and 250 euros in Europe.  Clearly there's a price descrepency.  They could definitely drop the price of the thing in Europe, where it costs $308.78 if we convert the difference. They're definitely not losing money on the device, even if there's money going to shipping, R&D, selling to retailers, etc.  They can drop the price of the device without losing money, and right now, that wouldn't be a bad course of action.

I get what you mean when you say unprecedented success as in when you look at the life of the PS3, but the way you word it you make it seem like it's done well when compared to the PS1 and PS2, which it clearly hasn't.
And even though Sony won't necessarily die if the Vita doesn't do well, publishers won't put games on the device if it has such a small install base.  Here's an excerpt from an interview with Shuhei Yoshida

"...he also admits that "because of the growth of the social/mobile sector, lots of opportunities are being presented to publishers to choose from, and because the social/mobile side is the growing sector in terms of the business now, they are very quickly shifting their development resources to be part of that growing market." As a result, Sony is "having a more difficult time than [they] had anticipated in terms of getting support from third-party publishers, but that's our job.""

I don't know about you, but I find that very troubling.  When someone says they are currently having trouble making 3rd parties make games for the device, that means that it'll be a while before major support actually comes to the device, meaning the drought the system is having will last for a long time unless if a major change in direction happens.  It doesn't matter how great the system is and how many great games are for it if nobody buys the thing.  Here's a perfect picture as to why the system isn't doing well, from a user on Destructoid:
"I'm just gonna out and say it. For when I go out, my phone is not only the only thing I want to bring with me, it also gets the gaming job done really ... well.

Forget about the 300 bean price point, all said, and imagine the number of people who have no real will to use this portable almost anywhere but home, and those people witnessing a selling point that is entirely "a home console experience on the go!".

What "go"? That's what I ask myself.

I want a 3DS (almost bought one, but ran out of cash) because I don't have a DS anymore, and the thing has a boner for the kinds of games I can't really get on a console. The Vita doesn't seem to have quite that same boner, so I'm waiting.

But honestly, at the end of the day, my phone caters to all my gaming needs when I'm somewhere that's not home, and my PS3 caters to them when I am."

Gaming on phones when the PSP released looked like this:
http://mobile360.org/upload/img/240x320 … Begins.jpg

Here's what cell phone gaming looked like in 2009-10, when the PSP's sales started to waver in the west:
http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/FCKEditorF … 20(14).png
And now you have stuff like Infinity Blade 2 and Horn on phones.

It's a different market, yet Sony is sticking to what worked back when the PSP launched.  I just don't see it working.

I just found this.
EDIT: It's on pushsquare now: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2012/08/ … ing_to_ps3
I think we can all agree that this is an absolutely horrible idea.  Even if it doesn't happen to any other game, it tells people who don't own a Vita that some of the great stuff on the system is going to be on another that they already own.

I keep seeing people putting "kid oriented" and Nintendo in the same sentence. If anybody noticed Nintendo isn't popular for being "kid oriented". If they were, Vtech and Leapfrog would of been more or just as popular. Though correctly: Nintendo is more family oriented. A lot of adults buy Nintendo consoles for themselves because the 20 to 40 range played NES, GB, etc through their teen-aged years and childhood and are still pretty loyal. Since 3DS got VC it has attracted more of those fans.

http://www.amazon.com/toys-learning-vte … %20console

http://www.amazon.com/toys-games-leapfr … =166164011

@R-L-A-Geoge  I agree with you, but you've also got to keep in mind the difference in quality.  Nintendo devices and the software on them are definitely better than what leapfrog and Vtech brought to the table.
But yeah, you're completely right on family-oriented rather than kid-oriented.

I applaud this approach, and hope to G-d they eventually do it with every good game that gets released on the Vita.