Given recent sales trends, Nintendo probably isn’t that worried about the PlayStation Vita posing any kind of a threat to their own 3DS. But that doesn’t mean that haven’t thought about Sony’s device.
Over at Edge, an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto has the Nintendo game design legend praising the specs of the Vita but also finding fault with the device’s launch so far:
“It’s obviously a very hi-spec machine, and you can do lots of things with it… But I don’t really see the combination of software and hardware that really makes a very strong product.”
To be fair, he also says that the 3DS faced similar challenges at its debut:
“When we launched the 3DS hardware we didn’t have Super Mario 3D Land, we didn’t have Mario Kart 7, we didn’t have Kid Icarus: Uprising. We were striving to have all of these ready for the launch, but we weren’t able to deliver them at that time. We were kind of hoping that people would, nevertheless, buy into the product, find 3DS hardware promising, but looking back we have to say we realise the key software was missing when we launched the hardware.”
That last bit speaks to the kind of following that Nintendo’s built up over its decades of handheld gaming dominance. A chunk of their constituency is the will to invest in new hardware with the understanding that the games — usually the iconic first-party franchises — will come. Sony hasn’t built that kind of faith in the handheld market yet and it’s clearly hurting them.
Miyamoto: Vita needs games [Edge]
Leave a Reply