Vita price-cut not in the cards for 2012, says Yoshida

By Stephany Nunneley

Vita will not be the recipient of a price-cut this year, if comments made by Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida are any indication.

Speaking with Eurogamer, Yoshida said Sony is looking at other ways in which to bring value to customers other than price-cut, because it’s still “too early” for one.

“Of course, cost reduction is one area our engineering team is working on,” said Yoshida, “but we just launched the platform earlier this year. It takes time to do so.

“At a certain point in the future we would like to address the pricing issue for some of the people who are waiting. But this year we are trying to add value by creating different types of bundles. We announced we will provide LittleBigPlanet PS Vita bundle pack. That’s affordable for people who are looking for a good deal.”

Yoshida admitted Sony needs to work on bringing more content “from big titles” as well as “very small, snack-sized, intuitive casual games,” on the distribution side of the handheld; however, the response from the consumer regarding Vita has been positive so far.

“The reaction to the hardware platform itself has been very strong,” he said. “We are very pleased with the response we got. It’s up to our expectations in terms of what we were hoping for in bringing PS Vita to the market.

“But the actual sales of PS Vita, obviously we would like to see more uptake. We see lots of feedback from consumers saying they would like to see more content, they would like to see their favorite franchises coming to the PS Vita.”

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