The market share and growth of handheld gaming devices has been on the rise in recent years and Sony are hoping it means a bright future for the PlayStation Vita.
The video game market in Japan tends to follow a slightly different trend if one was to compare it to its western cousins. At the same time though, the nation’s gaming community also gets their hands on the most of the new consoles before anyone else.
Andrew House, the President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, the sales records show that the PlayStation Portable sells more units on average than the PlayStation 3 in Japan.
“There seems to be a shift in Japanese gamers’ habits – in the last four or five years there seems to be a much greater focus on portable consoles and we’ve seen that in the recent sales of PSP versus PlayStation 3.”
In fact, anyone who follows www.dbuz.com’s coverage of the Japanese hardware sales charts will know that the Nintendo 3DS has been reigning supreme for the past few months and the PSP has been selling rather well also.
Mr. House was also quick to acknowledge that point when he said, “We’ve benefited greatly, of course, and PSP sales have been fantastic and will continue to be so, even though we now have a brand new console (the PlayStation Vita) available.”
The Sony executive also explained that neither he nor the publishers and developers could highlight the major reason behind the growth of portable gaming in recent years.
“Developer creativity in the portable space is a factor but I don’t think that is the only reason.”
One can be certain that House was referring to titles such as Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja and how they have taken mobile and portable gaming to new heights.
However, House also speculated that the growth could be down to how people are spending more time on the move and how gaming has become a habit while they are commuting.
Whatever the case, Sony will be hoping that the PlayStation Vita gets off to a solid start in the West where it is set to release in a matter of hours.
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