Zen said:
The low price of the Wii was what really allowed it to gain such critical mass in the marketplace. It would have faced a very unfavorable PR situation if it had launched at the same price as the 360 due to the system power making it, rightly, appear like Nintendo was pumping up the price for absurd profit margins. A fun low cost easy to use console was a major appeal of the Wii, and putting a mass market prohibitive price on an impulse purchase tailored item would have hampered its performance in the market period.
It's weird that you're trying to say in one breath that price wouldn't have changed how the Wii performed against the 360 whilst in another breath you say that, essentially, you just can't sell a handheld at $250.
You're acting like my argument is trying to say that the only reason the 3DS didn't sell well is because of system power, which couldn't be further from the truth. System power was a contributing factor.
250 dollars is not some magical barrier that consumer are unwilling to fork out for regardless of the device. The 3DS and Vita have different attributes and as such have different perceived value at different prices.
Oh graphics on handhelds matter less than they use to absolutely, and the success of angry birds says how little that can matter, but part of the reason that the Wii sold predominantly to casual gamers and non gamers was because the Wii wasn't capable of resonating with the segment of the market that wants high fidelity graphics. HELPED IN NO SMALL PART TO THE COMPLETE REFUSAL OF THIRD PARTIES TO GIVE A DAMN. But the wider the systems range to satisfy consumer wants, the better off it is. That's why Infinity Blade and Angry Birds can both be a success on the same device.
People adopted the PSP just fine for a while in spite of the software and experience being underwhelming. Sure the Vita won't be exactly console quality, but on an OLED screen? Frankly the difference will never have been so small, and it will enjoy technological superiority over the IOS market for some years to come. That's an ecosystem that the Vita can actively co-opt, where as the 3DS is already fairly technologically ancient in raw power with the IOS/Android market and the Vita, not that Nintendo's philosophy will probably mean that we'd see them attempting to co-opt smart phone gaming to any degree.
No, no, and no.
Software. Software. Software!
That's it. That's all that matters. Price has an effect on adoption, but it ALL comes down to software. Wii's sold (easily) for $500 on Ebay for like 2 years because it had a piece of software the mass market wanted to play. It was selling at near-PS3 costs because there was massive demand for the product, and it was all because of its launch title (hell if anything, Nintendo *underpriced* the Wii as the free market showed).
The DS, after its initial slow launch period, got pieces of software that the mass market wanted. The redesign helped, certainly, but it was all software that propelled it.
The 3DS, for all its pricing issues, does not have a piece of software that *everyone* wants to play. Therefore, it will continue to sell at a slow pace until it does. Past trends indicate that Mario Kart may be that piece of software, but we will not know until the holidays.
The Vita, looking at its rumoured launch titles, also does not have a piece of software that the mass market wants to play. And no, Uncharted is not mass market software. If you have something that everyone wants, people will gladly pay $250 for it.
My point is that "perceived value for what you're getting" means fuck all. It's entirely mass market software that will sell your platform.