With sales of Sony’s PlayStation Vita slumping by worldwide, a price cut similar to 3DS‘s early price cut, which proved to greatly increase the handheld’s install base, was expected of Sony’s E3 announcements. But after it didn’t show, Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida has said that a price drop is not being planned.
“Oh, absolutely,” said Yoshida to Eurogamer when asked if 2012 was too soon for a PlayStation Vita price cut.
“From the value for money standpoint, we think we have a good price for what the system is. And our priority is to achieve the potential through more games and services.
“Of course people who are looking to buy are also talking about the price of PS Vita, especially when they have to buy a memory card as well. That’s something we have to spend time to cost reduce and address in the future. But now, our laser focus is to increase the content and to realise the potential of the system.”
Yoshida also addressed Sony’s E3 press conference this year – specifically, the concern that Sony hadn’t spent enough time on Vita.
“As far as how our conference went – it went as well as we thought it could,” he said. “I’m getting lots of tweets from people saying, ‘where are PS Vita games?’ That was, in retrospect, our fault – not looking at every angle when we designed the programme for the show. We have 25 new games, Vita titles, playable on the show floor.
“We could have spent more time – probably we should – showing off those games coming out this year.”