Historically, Nintendo’s GameBoy consoles have always defined the handheld gaming experience. Intermittent efforts from Sega and Sony over the years have been unable to unseat Nintendo as the king of handhelds.

According to the latest sales figures from Sony, the PS Vita has surpassed 1.2 million units sold worldwide, despite an unenthusiastic reception in Sony’s home country of Japan.

In Europe, first week sales of the PS Vita outsold Nintendo’s new handheld console, the 3DS. In the United States and Japan, however, first-week sales figures for the Vita lagged behind other handheld gaming consoles of the current and previous generations.

The 3DS sold seven times as many units as the PS Vita worldwide last week. 3DS games have also sold well, making up 7 of the top 10 best-selling games of the previous week.

Nintendo’s perennial success with handhelds has had a massive effect on the platform as a whole. Of the top five best-selling handheld consoles of all time, four of them are made by Nintendo. Gamers who play handhelds have come to expect a certain experience, and this experience has been almost entirely defined by Nintendo’s vision.

The PS Vita also has its own strong vision for itself. It is meant to be the home console experience in your hands, with a large, high-definition screen and graphics comparable to the home experience. And this, possibly, is where it went wrong: It’s stepping on too many toes at once.

For the cost of a PS Vita (about $300 USD), you could buy an actual home console. And because the Vita requires a memory card made by Sony, that only works with the Vita, for an addition $100, you could probably find a Nintendo DS on the cheap for that price as well.

Handheld gamers do not expect, and quite possibly are not even enticed by, the ability to play home console games on a handheld system. The most popular handheld games by far are iOS games, which are often quick, shallow, and addictive. Even GameBoy and DS games are largely episodic, with frequent opportunities to quit and come back later.

Console games, on the other hand, are meant for prolonged play. To try to fit a full console experience into an intrinsically stop-and-go format is at worst a misjudgement of the nature and appeal of the platform.

At best, it suits a very particular, perhaps European, demographic. If you do not have the space in your apartment for a home entertainment system, and use trains or busses more often than a car to get from place to place, being able to experience console gaming in a handheld format could have appeal.

Taking into consideration, however, that the largest gaming markets are in the United States and Japan, the Vita seems poorly thought through. For now, gamers who want a home console experience still prefer to play on an actual home console. Add to that the exorbitant price tag of the Vita, its aesthetically unimpressive OS, and the additional hidden cost of a proprietary memory stick, and the Vita seems to be stepping on its own toes as well.

The article Is the PS Vita Too Ambitious for Its Own Good? appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

According to British news magazine MCV (The Market for Computer and Video Games), inside sources from Microsoft have given them information that the successor console to the Xbox 360 will not include an optical disc drive, and will be on sale in 2013. Microsoft refused to confirm the rumors, but issued a statement on March 9 that they are always trying to “defy the lifecycle convention.”

If this information proves to be true, it would be a significant change to the gaming world. While record collections are now mostly digitalized and people prefer their music digital, the infrastructure for gaming is not quite as prepared for an all-digital economy.

The Xbox 360 is arguably the most popular gaming console this generation, with the widest selection of games, a huge online-experience user base, and a serious gamer clientele.

Many of the games that came out this generation were mold-breaking, history-making landmarks for the industry. This is generation in which gaming overtook the movie industry in terms of gross revenue. For the next Xbox to feature no optical disc drive means gamers’ collections will be rendered unplayable, and hauling out the old 360 to play the old classics will be unappealing to the next generation of gamers.

A lack of backwards compatibility for already-existing games is not the only issue of concern for an all-digital platform. The collector’s edition also rose to prominence in the past seven years, a package that allows devoted fans to pay a bit more for some extra nice packaging, an art book, some exclusive behind-the-scenes info, and other perks.

Without a physical distribution, collector’s editions will either be a thing of the past, or rendered digital as well. Human beings, as proved by the continuing sales of physical books despite the growing popularity of ebooks, are tactile creatures, and unwilling to entirely abandon the feel of holding something they bought in their hands, for bits of data on their harddrives.

Another potential issue for digital distribution is an increased vulnerability to piracy. Digital media, such as music or movies, is significantly easier to copy and share than disc or cartridge-based media. Even on the Xbox 360, if you have installed a game on your harddrive, you still need the physical game disc in the disc drive for confirmation. Microsoft acknowledges the risk of relying only on digital media.

All-digital will also be a blow to the retail sector. If everything goes through a centralized Microsoft download hub, that means even Amazon will be affected by reduced game sales, let alone the more traditional brick-and-mortar stores. This could have a significant impact on the money-generating power of the gaming industry.

If Microsoft decides to go ahead without any optical disc drive, they will have to be prepared either for a huge success with crippling effects in other sectors, or a massive failure that will significantly affect their profits. Some of these concerns, such as collector’s editions and retail distributors, could be ameliorated by using small solid state drives loaded with games instead of purely online distribution, but backwards compatibility and piracy will remain considerable factors.

Image Courtesy of   Barone Firenze / Shutterstock.com

The article Rumored Next-Gen Xbox Could Cause Concern for Industry appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.