The Vita is in big trouble, but it can be saved

I don't see how the Vita's in that much trouble. The 3DS was a commercial failure until its price was dropped, and even then it sold 4.5 million in its first year. The Vita, with much less favorable circumstances than the 3DS (such as the Japanese support of the PSP killing the Vita's sales there), has sold 3.75 million as of recent reports; that's just a year (almost to the day) after the Japanese launch, and that's not counting the next two months of sales to reach its first year in the rest of the world. The Vita's only doing poorly because it's being compared to the 3DS - in its second year - and the single fastest-selling PlayStation product (the PSP). And even then, the 3DS is only selling all that well because it is following Nintendo's cheap business strategy of releasing multiple versions of the same thing and selling them as "New" so that people will jump on the new one. (Mind you, I love Nintendo, and the strategy does make sense from a business standpoint. I'm still extremely pissed that they announced the 3DSXL literally a week after Miyamoto flat-out said they weren't going to be selling new upgrades to the 3DS like they'd done with the DSLite/i/iXL.) The Vita isn't doing as well as Sony would like (but they'd like it to be better than the PSP, which won't happen if they can't get Capcom to put Monster Hunter on it), but it's got a really good future ahead of it, no matter what all the doom-and-gloom articles will say. Good support, not much shovelware, Cross-Buy, a possible price cut for memory sticks in the near future (at least I've heard this rumor going around recently, no word on if it's true or not yet), etc. Without much success in its bread-and-butter region for sales, it's STILL competing with the 3DS Y1 sales. Whether the Vita will get the same sales boom as the 3DS in Y2 is unknown yet, but it's safe to say it's not going to bomb like everyone keeps trying to say.

I agree 100%, i've been saying the same thing all over the place in the numerous articles that spout this same junk. The Vita hasn't been out as long and hasn't established a library yet, before the 3DS got its price break it didn't have much of a library either. Black Ops Declassified didn't suck because it was on the Vita, it sucked because the company is lazy about ports. Look at all the terrible ports they've put out to the Wii and DS, they treated the Vita only slightly better. And saying Assassin's Creed Liberation is a disappointment is ridiculous, every time someone speaks of disappointment they say in comparison to the CONSOLE AC games, they all say its better than any portable entry released so far so maybe its just a matter of ridiculous expectations (such expectations don't exist for the 3DS which is really only marginally better than the DS) I don't even have a Vita yet and I already have more games lined up for it than my 3DS (last game i bought for that was Mario Kart 7) Predicting doom just seems like a tactic to grab readers, its the gaming journalism equivalent of a nightly news health scare ("is your coffee killing you? tune in at 11") Viva La Vita

This is going to sound unrelated at first and there will be a lot of digression, I warn you: I really wish I could support the 3DS more from a gamer standpoint, but I simply can't. I was really excited for its launch lineup when it was announced back in that February or whenever issue of GameInformer, and that the memory on each cartridge was now 4GB. It really had me, as well as a friend of mine, sold. However, I started seeing through the guise as the launch neared; once I realized that the 3DS was just a marginal upgrade a la DS Lite, I dropped off entirely and focused on console gaming instead. My friend decided to buy the 3DS because he felt the launch lineup would be good, but ended up only having OoT3D for the first few months of launch. To this day he only has maybe three games for it, and he doesn't touch it more than once every few months. Now, I'm not going to say that the Vita is necessarily "better" for fear of coming off as a Sony fanboy, but what I've seen so far from it is definitely more of what I expected from a new handheld than the 3DS (compared to their respective predecessors). The GBA to the DS was a huge jump, one you should have with a generational jump; the PSV took that jump from the PSP, but Nintendo, I feel, got complacent and decided to make the DS5 and 6, rather than something that is actually worth that ~$250 launch price that they initially had. Anyway, though the 3DS is undoubtedly a success, I feel this sort complacency is what will lead to the inevitable failure of the Wii U (and it will fail; I have good reason to believe so and can elaborate on request). Nintendo to me seems like it's been off for the past few years, almost as if they expect to have the success they've had last gen no matter what. It concerns me that Sony has got a legitimately better product than Nintendo in the handheld market, because Nintendo SHOULD have that market locked down as they always have. Fiscally, they may still have it locked down, but 25 million shipments doesn't mean much when nobody buys the software and many people trade it back in. I hope Nintendo shows some more care in this next few months, because this concern has been growing, and I don't want to see Nintendo in this kind of state; that's something I expect from Microsoft. (GraphicRogue, this was intended as a reply to your comment about the 3DS games you have in comparison to what you want for the Vita. In fact, while I'm here, I'll bring up a bit of research I did earlier this year: After looking at a comprehensive list of games for both handhelds in their first years, the Vita came out with nearly double the must-buy games as the 3DS, and that was before I'd counted Gravity Rush and some other shockers. Now given, the 3DS did gain a LOT of must-buy titles in its 13th and 14th months, but the point was that the Vita has so much more worthy software than the 3DS.)

Paladin, I knew figures would back up game quality versus quantity in favor of the Vita. The 3DS is interesting but not revolutionary and its social aspects are better geared toward a population density like japan. Walked around my entire college campus with Street Pass on and found 3 people. I also think that these doomsday articles are failing to take into account the impact of digital games between the two. The 3DS is barely embracing digital distribution, only really dealing in demos of recent games, overpriced GB games or fluff DSiware. Vita is made to take full advantage of digital distribution with digital versions of brand new games available same day and actually cheaper (as digital versions should be) as well as a large back library of PSP and PS1 games. The only stumbling point there is the proprietary memory cards being overpriced due to a monopoly, system price isn't that bad but memory cards do need to drop if they want to better market it as a digital capable device. They are in a good position to appeal to indie developers with their handheld system without the same kind of restrictiveness of Apple or even Xbox Live Arcade. Sony can't really claim digital sales toward PS Vita because some can be PSP or PS3 playable but their not getting spanked as badly as people are making it out to be. 3DS gathers dust til something significant comes out (a portable Smash Bros with decent online/local multiplayer and they can brag)

That Smash Bros might come true pretty soon, and would really justify a 3DS by itself if handled correctly. Whether Sakurai and Namco handle it correctly is another story (I really never liked Sakurai's conservative standpoint on many things, which makes me confused why Miyamoto seems so intent on making Sakurai his successor). The Memory Sticks in retrospect should've been handled the way of the WiiU: Anybody can get any form of them to work with the console (or in this case, handheld). Sony's making a killing off of them at the expense of the gamers, and it's definitely turning quite a few people off. I do agree with you as far as digital support goes, but I feel (read: hope) that Nintendo is planning on becoming more modern-era-friendly as far as things like DLC and digital games go (rather than charging EXTRA for digital games). Meanwhile Sony discounts their digital games as they should; I still won't touch digital for the Vita (once I get one) so long as the Memory Sticks are as expensive as they are though. Damn, I really keep digressing in these comments!

I'd argue the recognizable brands part, considering: Mortal Kombat, LBP, Uncharted, R&C (albeit as of January of next year), Sly 4 (see R&C), CoD, AC, Rayman, Disgaea, [insert every sports franchise here], Metal Gear, ModNation, Motorstorm, Need for Speed, Resistance, Wipeout, and a bunch of other ports of big name games I could add in here. I should also note that the PSP was outsold about 2:1 by the DS in its lifetime, so this is something to be expected when going up against Nintendo's handhelds. It losing doesn't justify its alleged failure (tying back into what the article is about), because the PSP was wildly successful; it just happened to lose to a handheld that sold remarkably well because of its four iterations. Just like why the 3DSXL is selling well, and why the iPhones always sell well: Once you have the placebo new technology effect locked in on customers (in Nintendo's case, with kids), they'll always strive to get the newer one. It's a respectable, if somewhat cheap, business strategy, and one that Nintendo has excelled with during its reign as rulers of the handheld.