PS Vita: General Discussion

[Cyborg_Noodle]

K Mart, Target and Big W aren't stocking them... Which is frankly stupid, but whatever. I work at EB games, and we've had very good sales at our store. Sold out of the first shipment except for one preorder that still hasn't been picked up... (*****?) We've sold out of almost all the Vita games, and our first shipment of memory cards. It's actually been annoying that they haven't been sending us sufficient refill. We haven't gotten in replacement copies of most games that were available at launch. So... I think it was more successful than Sony (or whoever the Australian distributers are) thought it was going to be...

The only sad thing is that we got sent a display unit, but our store doesn't have anywhere to put a display handheld unit on display, so it's stuck behind the counter as the display units need to be plugged in all the time.

[PllayStation]

EB Games sucks!

[Cyborg_Noodle]

Don't you work at EB in Melbourne or something? ...Or maybe I just imagined that. Lol

[BiohazardBlaze]

I would be curious to know the figures too,

But when I walked into my local EB on the Tuesday after launch they didn't have any 3G models left, which was going to be my initial purchase. But after speaking to the person in the store, I felt comfortable going for a WiFi only Vita.

She said she had 9 of them, then corrected herself, 8 pre-orders and 1 avaliable.

So I snatched it up along with their last copies of Rayman, WipeOut and Uncharted. 

Which, now, sounds good that they were selling. Though at the time I was worried I might miss out.

I'm not sure that's super-duper impressive though, as it sounded as though they didn't have a lot of them to sell in the first place. I don't know if Sony's had conservative estimates on what they'd sell or stock was genuinely short due to launching pretty much everywhere but Japan, in one week. 

But i'm glad it doesn't seem to be the gross marketing tactic where they pass out 5 Vitas and when they're all gone they make a big stink, pat themselves on the back and proclaim, "Vita demand so strong, we're sold out!"

[Cyborg_Noodle]

Yeah, we only got about twenty units, including preorders in the first shipment. I think that Sony cautiously underestimated the demand.

[retraction282]

I purchased unit13 from a good guys store on the outskirts of Brisbane today, they told me I was the first person to buy ANYTHING vita related from their store... Thats gotta be a bit of a concern!! I suppose most gamers don't go to the good guys for video games though

[lagunareturns]

Sony is still underestimating the demand, I have gone to Harvey Norman and they have 5 games on the shelf and that's it, the sales person at the section knew nothing about the Vita but he did confirm the limited selection was due to the games were already sold out....

Also Sony is underestimating the Aussie demand with very slow PSN releases, I mean UK gets releases ahead of us when we get and share so many content with the UK PSN... *****, I mean Treasures of Mentozuma (I know is crap) is still not released, nor Pinball Arcade or Stardrone Extreme (Which I can confirm is available in UK PSN)...

At least SONY have slightly relaxed the pricing on the Aus PSN, maybe they did finally listen to the forum post here about the pricing, still it does need to go lower on some PSP games, some were lowered and hey I purchased them but some are priced $50 and $60 which is BS as retailers don't sell PSP games at those prices here anymore and are still overpriced much more than US and other regions.... I mean ***** are some PSP games in other regions get discounts but not here, I heard the Persona series were getting discounted but on Aus PSN they are still at Day 1 pricing....

What I can figure with the limited stock issue is too many retailers have lowered the prices below standard $68 pricing to achieve wiping out the stock, and hence are hesitant to order much more if sales at retail pricing can't be achieved but hey it is Sony's fault at overpricing, sure some Vita games on PSN have dropped to $45, it is still too, much for a downloadable, if the physical copy of the games achieve $45 for standard retail, they will fly of the shelf....

Still the pricing is an issue that still needs to be dealt with, at least it seems Sony is doing something... The bigger issue is real lack of game releases after Vita initial release here, this is reason why I complained about the delay of releases here on PSN compared to other regions... For the Vita to be successful now is it needs much more game releases, currently all are at the end of each month, so what we got about 8 titles to wait for and still waiting for due to delays...

I am aware there are more titles that may be released this year like another 5 that have been confirmed but I am talking about the titles announced for Vita before launch, sure some said they were delayed releases but others have been pushed far back, I heard the that Little Big Planet has been pushed back to November, and that is the US release date.

I don't know what Sony is thinking, first they release a buggy portable, which only fixed the bugs recently, no game releases until months after Vita release date is extremely hurting the Vita, it seriously needs releases and what really disappoints me is the lack of concrete release dates, major delays for some releases and the fact it is near impossible to get any concrete release date for Australia, I mean we are selling out your products, and I hear regular PSN sale in Australia but Sony is having nothing to do anything for Australia, I mean what is the delay between UK and Aus I mean am I not chatting in the UK based PSN forum.... I really isn't it time to have a proper aussie PSN with a proper aussie forum or is Sony not caring for its very loyal customers.

Another thing that Sony has really ticked me off is the fact an interview with a Sony official stated the reason for the lack firmware updates is due to the lack of Vita console sales. What utter BS, one of the reason of lack of hardware sales is too many Vita users are posting over the internet stating Vita buggy firmware early on and the lack of the firmware features, can't even Sony realise that its lack of firmware updates are hurting the sales especially when the only firmware updates so far are primarily bug fixes and to prevent piracy and users have posted that all over the internet too...

I mean it is very bloody simple, do more relevant updates, fix support for youtube, add a decent web browser (if you cant then get Mozilla, Google, at least someone that can) and STATE what the updates do, I mean if it does bug fixes, say so don't let the end user find out and share it to everyone else....

I mean is really Sony blind, deaf and stupid, they have amazing platform but the ones that are killing it is themselves... They really stop making dumb excuses, stop doing small fix after small fix and just think the problem solved.... What they really need to do is just stop everything, I mean marketing and plans and management of the PS Vita and do a change over right now as their current direction is death of a platform or best a poorly supported platform (look at PSP) I mean do they want the same performance of a PSP or slightly better because this their current direction especially it is currently having hard competition with 3DS and iPhone.

[PllayStation]

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lagunareturns wrote:
Sony is still underestimating the demand, I have gone to Harvey Norman and they have 5 games on the shelf and that's it, the sales person at the section knew nothing about the Vita but he did confirm the limited selection was due to the games were already sold out....

Also Sony is underestimating the Aussie demand with very slow PSN releases, I mean UK gets releases ahead of us when we get and share so many content with the UK PSN... *****, I mean Treasures of Mentozuma (I know is crap) is still not released, nor Pinball Arcade or Stardrone Extreme (Which I can confirm is available in UK PSN)...

At least SONY have slightly relaxed the pricing on the Aus PSN, maybe they did finally listen to the forum post here about the pricing, still it does need to go lower on some PSP games, some were lowered and hey I purchased them but some are priced $50 and $60 which is BS as retailers don't sell PSP games at those prices here anymore and are still overpriced much more than US and other regions.... I mean ***** are some PSP games in other regions get discounts but not here, I heard the Persona series were getting discounted but on Aus PSN they are still at Day 1 pricing....

What I can figure with the limited stock issue is too many retailers have lowered the prices below standard $68 pricing to achieve wiping out the stock, and hence are hesitant to order much more if sales at retail pricing can't be achieved but hey it is Sony's fault at overpricing, sure some Vita games on PSN have dropped to $45, it is still too, much for a downloadable, if the physical copy of the games achieve $45 for standard retail, they will fly of the shelf....

Still the pricing is an issue that still needs to be dealt with, at least it seems Sony is doing something... The bigger issue is real lack of game releases after Vita initial release here, this is reason why I complained about the delay of releases here on PSN compared to other regions... For the Vita to be successful now is it needs much more game releases, currently all are at the end of each month, so what we got about 8 titles to wait for and still waiting for due to delays...

I am aware there are more titles that may be released this year like another 5 that have been confirmed but I am talking about the titles announced for Vita before launch, sure some said they were delayed releases but others have been pushed far back, I heard the that Little Big Planet has been pushed back to November, and that is the US release date.

I don't know what Sony is thinking, first they release a buggy portable, which only fixed the bugs recently, no game releases until months after Vita release date is extremely hurting the Vita, it seriously needs releases and what really disappoints me is the lack of concrete release dates, major delays for some releases and the fact it is near impossible to get any concrete release date for Australia, I mean we are selling out your products, and I hear regular PSN sale in Australia but Sony is having nothing to do anything for Australia, I mean what is the delay between UK and Aus I mean am I not chatting in the UK based PSN forum.... I really isn't it time to have a proper aussie PSN with a proper aussie forum or is Sony not caring for its very loyal customers.

Another thing that Sony has really ticked me off is the fact an interview with a Sony official stated the reason for the lack firmware updates is due to the lack of Vita console sales. What utter BS, one of the reason of lack of hardware sales is too many Vita users are posting over the internet stating Vita buggy firmware early on and the lack of the firmware features, can't even Sony realise that its lack of firmware updates are hurting the sales especially when the only firmware updates so far are primarily bug fixes and to prevent piracy and users have posted that all over the internet too...

I mean it is very bloody simple, do more relevant updates, fix support for youtube, add a decent web browser (if you cant then get Mozilla, Google, at least someone that can) and STATE what the updates do, I mean if it does bug fixes, say so don't let the end user find out and share it to everyone else....

I mean is really Sony blind, deaf and stupid, they have amazing platform but the ones that are killing it is themselves... They really stop making dumb excuses, stop doing small fix after small fix and just think the problem solved.... What they really need to do is just stop everything, I mean marketing and plans and management of the PS Vita and do a change over right now as their current direction is death of a platform or best a poorly supported platform (look at PSP) I mean do they want the same performance of a PSP or slightly better because this their current direction especially it is currently having hard competition with 3DS and iPhone.

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Overall, PS Vita is only 4 months (and 1 day) old, so there's absolutely nothing to be concerned about, because if you remember when 3DS was 4 months old it was experiencing all sorts of problems as well.

[stupidbunnysuit]

Hey lagunareturns,

The Australia / New Zealand forums here are indeed run and moderated by a team from Australia / New Zealand - to clarify your point on the following.

lagunareturns wrote:

I mean am I not chatting in the UK based PSN forum.... I really isn't it time to have a proper aussie PSN with a proper aussie forum

STATE what the updates do, I mean if it does bug fixes, say so don't let the end user find out and share it to everyone else....

Also, the firmware fixes are published on the Official website when the file is released, and you can view each and every update from the past, here:

http://au.playstation.com/psvita/support/system-software/

Hope this answers a few questions.

-sbs

[lagunareturns]

Ok about the forums, I admit I was wrong...

Still the mention of the firmware, I meant to say the updates including on your link still doesn't state all the changes, it did not mention 1.66 fixed PSN Plus users can play their free MINI fgames and how about to get the free MINI games working when you have the firmware or other changes (like the speed up during PSN and PSN based apps like NEAR or the fact it fixes performance issues with PSP games which I found out on my own) that other users have found and posted on gaming sites and other forums. I guess you would like to leave it for the end users to figure that out on their own or get such info from a non Sony website.

What else most of the details you given in that link weren't there when you do check for a firmware update on the PS Vita, it just says there is a new version, I have to google about it before I download to find out what it actually does, it can't have an extra page to tell you what it does before having the agreement page (can't you have the agreement page shorter as well, if I printed it I would go over a few pages. I mean do you really intended it to be so long so 99.9% of users ignore what is said) that comes before downloading...

One last thing who in their infinite wisdom make the end user figure out how to do things clearly, well back to the agreement page for the firmware update, you can't click agree until you realise you need to scroll all the way down before the agree button becomes active , where does it say I have to do that, if I didn't install PC apps where I had to do same I would have a hard time to figure it out... Also I mean when I had to update Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3, it said I needed to do update but not clearly where, I had google that and non Sony site had the answer...

I don't know about you but when making a software, especially an O/S where it needs to be intuitive, I guess you wouldn't realise the iPhone is a competition even though every reviewer of the PS Vita have made the comparison to the iPhone and the fact is iPhone even in the early days it was very intuitive.