It was just over a month ago that things were looking bleak for the Vita. Japanese sales for the system started off well enough in the first week (324,859 units sold), but declined sharply week after week thereafter. Despite the gloom cast over PlayStation Vita’s future by some analysts, I myself pointed out another factor at play with how the Vita had done in that market: the lack of Japanese-centric software to help move systems. As I said then, “Japan differs from the US in that, more often than not, software moves hardware. We’re very used to the reverse here, but across the Pacific it’s common to see spikes in hardware sales corresponding to game releases like Monster Hunter or Pokemon.”
Now it’s a bit early to break out the champagne, but the Vita officially launched last week in the rest of the world and the results have been much improved. As of this week, Sony’s little handheld-that-might has broken through the million unit barrier to rest around 1.2 million unit sales. Eurogamer has given a figure of 578,812 units sold in Japan to date, so the math puts the remaining sales over 621k units. That’s not bad by any stretch, but the Vita’s first week in Japan wasn’t bad either and we saw what happened there. At this point I’m sticking with my original assessment that we’ll need a few months to see where the Vita winds up, but at least the worldwide launch wasn’t a flop.
The strong launch lineup of the Vita compared to most system launches has been in evidence as well. Combined retail and digital software sales for the PS Vita have surpassed 2 million units. One can only imagine that there was a large uptick in the sales of PSP games compatible with the Vita as well (Sony’s press release implies that the 2 million units are PS Vita-specific software), which will only grow as game compatibility is expanded. PS One Classics will also help bring value to gamers’ purchase, although there’s no date for when those will be available for Vita.
[source: gamesindustry.biz, Eurogamer]
