FIRST SIGNS OF A VITA RECOVERY IN JAPAN?

Cut the price, sell more products. Who knew?

Many interested eyes awaited the official media create figures this week following the price cut of the Vita in Japan. How many was it going to sell? Would the price cut affect anything at all? Does anyone even care about it?

After suggestions that it was going to be a fourfold increase, it was quite pleasing to see that the actual result was actually nearly six times, smashing in at 62,543 units, which although not outselling the combined 3DS total of 77k is a massive achievement and is no doubt helped by the sales of Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus being released and shifting 94,324 and Phantasy Star Online 2, which despite being free managed to shift 61,227 physical copies.

This is a great start, but the proof will be in the pudding with consistancy; Soul Sacrifice is out this week and with many more titles on the Japanese horizon Sony will really be looking for a solid regular performance here to show that the Vita can be adopted in its home market. The price seems to have had an immidiate impact, can it be done two weeks in a row now?

And where is our western price cut? I know Sony appear to be reluctant to cut it here, citing currency fluctuations among many issues, but when price is seemingly the main reason that people haven’t picked one up yet and it has an instant reaction when you do cut it, surely you need to take the incentive?

In the meantime I look forward to next weeks results…

[Sources - 4Gamer via Gematsu and PSVita Gamer]