Pulling the Plug on the PlayStation Vita's Successor Part 1: Why The Vita Failed

Handheld Gaming. It was and, in some ways due to mobile gaming, is a huge thing. I, myself prefer playing handheld games compared to games on console for the sole purpose that I can go anywhere. From anyplace in the city to anyplace in the house, I can play games. We have come a long way from when the Game Boy came out where we had to play an 8-bit game on a tiny screen, IN PROPER LIGHTING to systems like the Vita with amazing graphics and in 3D like the Nintendo 3DS. It's amazing to see how things can go in the future, except with the Vita...
     If you haven't heard, over the weekend it has been announced that there will be no successor to the PlayStation Vita. As shocking as it seems, not really, there are reasons why it probably wasn't a hard decision as to why Sony decided to pull the plug on making another PlayStation handheld.
     Let's start with the most important, sales. Sales is the huge factor as to why we will not have a successor. When the Vita first came out, it sold over 325,000 units in Japan, which was ok, but sales started to slump in the following weeks. Overall, in the first quarter, February 2012, it has sold 1.2 million units worldwide and over 2 million in software, compared to the PSP's 2.2 million in 2007, but most importantly short compared to the Nintendo 3DS' 3.61 million in its first quarter. Sales continued to go down for the Vita after its first year. As of now, it has sold approximately 4 million from its launch to December 2014 compared to its rival the 3DS' 53 million (17 million in 2014) and its predecessor the PSP's 80 million.
      The second is the probably the second most important, games. The Vita did not have a strong library of games to play. They didn't have that many exclusives that people wanted to play. What they had to offer nobody wanted and what they tried to get they couldn't deliver. What they had you could've played on the console games and were much better versions. Why would you play Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD on the Vita when you can get it in better resolution on the PS4? Having games, importantly a strong exclusive gaming library is important to get people to solely play that system. Nintendo has learned this when the Wii U suffered in its earlier years when it had nothing to play and noticed sales picked up when they finally gave us an abundance of games to play later on.
      Lastly, Sony did not care. They barely did any marketing for the Vita and the games they had to offer. When sales kept plummeting, they barely did anything to help pick things up. At least with Nintendo and the 3DS' sales which were less than the DS's managed to turn things around with doubling down on pushing the system out and giving us better titles to play with. Sony just did nothing hoping that people will eventually play the Vita and just quietly pushed it under the rug when less and less people picked it up.
      We know why it probably was a good decision for Sony to pull out of the handheld game and not make a successor. Another question could be despite how the Vita fared, should they? That's for Part 2. Stay tuned.

     What do you think contributed to the PlayStation Vita's demise?

The (Recent) Delaying of Mighty No. 9: Should We Delay The Outrage?

     Mighty No 9 is a 2D platformer where you are an Android who's mission is to save the world by stopping a number or robots who have been corrupted by a computer virus and find out who is the villain behind all of this. If this sounds like a Mega-Man game it must only be due to the guy who is making this game was also responsible for making the Mega-Man series, Kenji Inafune and his company he founded after leaving Capcom, Comcept. According to Inafune, Mighty No. 9 is a spiritual successor to the Mega-Man games as it mirrors them in terms of story, gameplay, and up until a few early sketches the main character himself.
     With the Mega-Man series being in the state it is now with Mega only making guest appearances in other games and the only news of a new Mega-Man game being made is of Capcom cancelling it, people have been clamoring to play this game. It shows when by how much money people have been throwing money at this game. Since 2013, the game has been funded by the fans and public on Kickstarter not only once, but a few times. The first time it met its $900,000 goal in two days back in 2013. With further stretch goals and donations from Paypal, over $4 million have been donated to the game to be made. It seems undeniable the people are highly anticipating the final production of the game and can't wait to play it, except that they will. It has recently been announced that the game has been delayed and will probably come out in 2016. The delay seems to be based on how to exactly release a proper demo of the game. This is a statement from their website:

"Although the demo had been finished and was ready to go, we ran into some very last-minute and unexpected complications with distributing the demo exclusively to all our backers through Steam. We’ve also been listening to your feedback about preferring to have a demo that is not time-limited. Given the complications with giving you the demo, we came to the conclusion that it would be better to make the demo DRM-free without any time restrictions.

Because this demo is exclusively for you, our backers, we still needed to have a way to get the demo to each of you individually and we’ve been looking into all the options. We’re currently working with our partners at Humble Bundle to prepare the demo for delivery through their service.

Unfortunately this change in our plans means that the release of the demo is going to be slightly delayed as we are currently working on retooling the demo for a DRM-free release. Comcept and all of our partners are working hard to get the demo ready and in our backers’ hands as soon as possible. We sincerely apologize for this delay, but we hope you’ll like the resulting changes!"

     As expected the fans and backers are angry about this sudden news and you can't blame them. They have invested money, literally millions, in this game and so far they really haven't gotten to see the result of their money. They will have to wait even long to play this game that they put their hard earned dollars in. Should they be mad? Again,it is justifiable they should be a bit upset waiting longer to play Mighty No. 9, but in a sense they should expect this.
     It takes a lot of time to make a game. Not just hours but months and even years to not only make it, but to perfect it. People need to realize that there is a lot going into this game with little resources. It takes longer when you don't necessarily have the proper resources to make something and you're doing it with no support from a major company, especially the most important one: money. Other than the donations on Kickstarter, Inafune had almost no support when coming up with the idea to make this game. He understands the admiration people had for the Mega Man series and the wants of playing games like that. That is the reason why he went on Kickstarter to make this game. The fact that Inafune and the production company has to go on Kickstarter in order to fund the game speaks volumes on how passionate they are on making this game. Overall, we need to be patient. We know it's going to be good in the end, hopefully.

What are your thoughts?

Why Watch Video Games When You Can Play Them Yourself?

     Jimmy Kimmel has been under some scrutiny recently. It all began when on his show he made a few jokes about Let's Play videos on YouTube. His comments haven't been kind about it. He stated that he doesn't get why they are popular and why people watch it. He also has said if why watch someone play when you can play it yourself.

     "Watching another person play video games is like going to a restaurant and have someone eat your food for you. If you like 'em, play them."

      The response from the gaming community has not been nice. Gamers have taken to YouTube, Twitter and other forms of social media they could and posted some nasty remark. Some have gone far as to give him threats and even wishing him to get cancer. Whether Kimmel knows it or not after all of the vocal response to his comments towards the gaming community of YouTube and Twitch, there is more to Let's Plays and Twitch streams than just watching other people play.
       People do watch Let's plays as a means to test out the game. They want to see if it is fun or good enough to buy for themselves. It works almost as better than reading a review online or in a magazine. You see the not only the game in action, but you see someone's reaction to playing the game.
      Aside from watching it as a decision to buy the game or not, and most importantly, Kimmel isn't realizing is that Let's Plays are a form of entertainment. People are not mainly watching just to see someone play a game. People watch it as a means of entertainment. It's more about who's playing the game. People love watching other people react playing games as it can be sometimes comical. Watching YouTubers like Pewdiepie and Markiplier react to what's happening in the game is indeed funny. It's more about the person's personality than the gameplay itself. That is the reason why these people have millions of views and subscriptions.
    This isn't an attack to what Kimmel said. This is more of an explanation as to why people watch Let's Plays. Of course it's normal how Kimmel, and others, react to Let's Plays. They don't get it and it's perfectly fine that they don't. It's not for everybody. Of course you would not get it and ask why would people watch Pewdiepie making weird noises playing Minecraft and Markiplier making funny faces everytime he plays Five Nights at Freddy's. The answer would be that people enjoy it and it's more than just watching someone play a game. However they can at least inform themselves and try to understand why it's popular. At least that's what he tried to do when after the outrage he invited YouTube celebrities Markiplier and MissesMae on his show and actually allowed himself to get educated. Whether he changed his views on Let's Plays is up to him.

Should Nintendo NOT Make Anymore Movies?

     It was revealed a while ago that head of Nintendo's creative design and king of your childhood Shigeru Miyamoto in an interview with Fortune has stated that Nintendo is considering to making movie deals again. What does this mean? It could very well mean that we could be seeing full feature movies based on your favorite Nintendo games and characters on the big screen again *cough*Legend of Zelda*cough*.

“As we look more broadly at what is Nintendo’s role as an entertainment company, we’re starting to think more and more about how movies can fit in with that—and we’ll potentially be looking at things like movies in the future,”

     This is not really a big surprise. There have been rumors circulating about Nintendo expanding past video games and opening up to other form of entertainment. There was the rumor that was later confirmed to be untrue of a Legend of Zelda series being made for Netflix. There was also news of another possible Super Mario Bros. movie in the works with Sony, due to the recent Sony hack. This should be cause of a celebration, right?

     Some people might not see it that way. Of course we haven't forgot Nintendo's first venture into Hollywood, the 90s live action Super Mario Bros. The Super Mario Bros. movie is herald as one of the ultimate bad video game movies ever, almost as bad as anything Uwe Boll can do. At the time of its release it was a box office bomb and met with terrible reviews. The cast weren't too thrilled with being attached to the movie as well. Actors John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins have publicly talked badly about it and the directors. Dennis Hopper hasn't had kind words to say about it either considering it was his Mommie Dearest. Nintendo however has been a good sport about it, even going further to say on the official Mario website that Mario can do anything except make movies. But even with a blunder like Super Mario Bros., should Nintendo make movies again.

     Surprisingly they have. A few years ago an animated full feature movie based upon the popular Animal Crossing movie was released in Japan. Recently there was an animated short movies based off of the Pikmin franchise. Even though there were movies being made, Nintendo has been very cautious of how these movies were distributed. The Pikmin movies were only exclusive on Nintendo's eShop and The Animal Crossing movie has only been shown in Japan.

     Bottom line, Nintendo has been careful with how they've done things outside of games and it seems that they have learned their lesson since the Super Mario Bros. movie. Also, they know that despite how bad it was fans still want movie adaptations of their other franchises like Metroid and The Legend if Zelda. It's nothing wrong with learn in from your mistakes and trying again. That's what exactly what Nintendo has done and that's what they're going to do. There us still a bit they will have to learn and hopefully one of the things is that they learn to work with the right team of people. A movie is just as good as the people who made it. Now let's hope Square Enix comes around to making movies again.

What are your thoughts?