In need of a boost

During its investor’s conference last week, Sony announced that it intends to sell 16 million PSP and Vita units over the coming fiscal year (ending 31st March, 2013). Looking at current PSP sales trends, that means the company expects to sell around 10 million Vitas over the next 12 months. But RW Baird analyst Colin Sebastian believes that reaching that figure will be a “stretch”.

He told Games Industry International:

10 million looks like a stretch goal at this point. Perhaps there is a price cut baked into that guidance later in the year, or Sony believe that there are titles such as Call of Duty for Vita that will be meaningful platform drivers.

Vita is a great dedicated game device, but the market for those products continues to shrink as smart devices become better platforms for games.

We doubt Sony will drop the price this early, but value added bundles seem like a certainty. The biggest concern with Vita right now is its proprietary storage format, so we wouldn’t be surprised if the company announced at E3 that it will start shipping 4GB cards with every new unit.

[source gamesindustry.biz]