I think they are aiming for mid-November. Sony launched the PS3 on November 17, 2006 so they might try to release it on the same day and market it along with the PS3's 5-year anniversary. At least that would be a good marketing strategy but, yeah, I hope it's out before December and certainly before 2012.

Didn't Sony said it be out in Hoilday 2011? For at least Japan

Yes, they did confirm a holiday release, likely for all regions.

Did you know that Sony is losing money everytime they sell a PS Vita? Sony said it won't be this cheap forever.

It's been well covered that Sony will be losing money on the Vita. However, they in no way implied an eventual price hike. They said they plan to turn a profit within 3 years, which means in 3 years the tech will be cheap enough that they'll be able to turn a profit at that price.

Yea, but the Vita prob is only worth like $300, and I expect that the 3DS could go down to $229.99

Sony is not going to lose any money on Vita.
Being more powerful then the 3DS and already has an great lineup of games, Sony is going to make a mess money off the Vita, and crush Nintendo's puny little handheld.

That too.

That's... not how business works.

Look up loss leading. It's what Sony is doing. It's what Nintendo should be doing.

@WaltzElf Agreed!

I explained this over the grassroots movement that Nintendo is currently facing, but it easily translates here too. If Sony can take a $50-100 dollar loss on getting a gamer to buy their system, but that gamer in turn buys a couple of games for it, they break even on the initial loss, but the majority of gamers that will buy Vita will eventually buy lots of games and they will profit way beyond their loss.

It works.

To be fair, this is something that Sony does all the time and also has the capacity to continue it whether it flops or not. Sony is a giant company, unlike Nintendo.

@WaltzElf, @Slapshot

That's still oversimplifying the situation. The loss involved is likely far more than 50 - 100 per console; the tech crammed into the box is certainly a big part of it, but then there's also the extensive R&D costs that each unit's profit would normally work to recoup. It's not just that Sony will be losing on each unit and then quickly make it back, like a printer manufacturer and your 2nd or 3rd time to buy new ink cartridges; it will likely take them years for the entire Vita enterprise to come up from going deep in the red, much like the PS3.

Sure, "loss leading" is an old term, dating back to the simple practice of selling one popular item at a loss in order to bring customers to your (physical) store, knowing that they'll also pick up a few other things on their way. In the tech industry, however, selling at a significant loss has become something much more problematic. It particularly has the potential to distort markets and competition in cases where the loss taken is on behalf of an agenda that reaches beyond the domain of the device. In other words, cases like Sony's motive of winning the Blu Ray format war, thereby allowing their gaming division to run billions into the red in order to essentially subsidize the success of another division of the company. That is precisely the sort of scenario that anti-trust laws exist to prevent.

I personally believe that we should be more wary of this as consumers. What you end up with is a loss of much of the innovation in the actual technology. No longer does victory go to the company who innovates within bounds (ie, best use of existing technology given constraints of size, efficiency, etc); instead, now certain sectors of the tech industry come to down to a competition over which company is big enough to sustain larger losses than its opponents. The direct consequence is that smaller, more innovative companies who work only within one product domain can no longer compete, even with superior products and ideas, as they face opponents that are companies of immense size that can run deep into the red in one of their product divisions for years.

You don't have to agree, but you should recognize that some of us find that to be a tremendous problem with current tech and gaming industries. I won't buy from companies that follow business models I don't support, and I believe we should all consider the implications of our purchases, not only the direct benefit to ourselves on a per-unit basis.

/end rant - anyhow, fortunately the Vita isn't my kind of thing to begin with, so I don't have to be conflicted over immediate benefit versus principles.

@wariowoods

I don't fully understand what you just said, but somehow it makes me want to support Sony even more.

Haha, fair enough, that is your right. : )

Actually it made me scared that Sony wants to take over the world, or something of the sort.

/supports Google. wait...

@wariowoods I understand exactly what you're saying, but at the same time this business model has worked for Sony very well with the PS3. They've lost a lot of money with the PS3 from the beginning, but it has paid off for them very well now. If it didn't work out for them though, things would be very different for Sony now. Sony took a huge risk with the PS3, and one that could have possible put them out of the gaming industry, but it worked for them. Making big profit takes risk, and Sony is willing to take massive risk, and it has paid off for them, but it might not always be this way.

To say that supporting Sony is bad for the gaming business is bad for the industry, isn't a statement that I'd support, but you're just as entitled to your opinion as I am mine, but I do want you to realize that the idea that Sony is a monopolistic type of business isn't correct. If Sony takes a huge risk (e.g. PS3, Vita) and it goes awry, then Sony will be in bad shape, and it would very likely change the way Sony does business in the future.

Also, Sony pushes the other companies to push harder than they might possibly would otherwise. Sony takes the huge risk, and the other companies end up having to keep up. This is fantastic for the gaming industry and it will continue to push other companies to develop games to be even better in the future, instead of settling for average to just above. It's just another way to look at it, but as I've already said, I respect your opinion entirely.

PSV -oversized "mature" Leapster.

Eventually, the "We'll make a loss and become successful later!" will backfire. It may have happened twice, and with the PS3, Sony was really hanging on the skin of it's teeth.

This is so going to be interesting

"Skin of it's teeth" is a bit of an over statement, don't you think? Even if they were lossing money on the console, they were making tons of moolah on the licensing and game sales.

:rollseyes: At least try to make sense. Please.

So to paraphrase, we should be worried that Sony, a corportation, is behaving like a business and working to beat the competition in a capitalist society?

For you, I recommend you read Sun Tsu's The Art of War.

To be more relevant - loss leading is a proven business model in the games industry. If you've got a major console, like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft do, the install base is large enough that you make a significant profit on your 3rd party licensing and internal software development. There's no need to be profitable with the hardware - the balance book at the end of the day is still in the black.

As a PS - you might want to check your facts on Blu Ray. Sony was just one company involved in its creation. Sure it had an interest in pushing it to the market, but consider the competition: HD DVD, which had the backing of Microsoft, an even bigger company. I'm not sure how, in that context, you can claim Sony did something morally reprehensible. Mind you, people would do well to learn that a corporation's moral code is fundamentally different to an individual person and should stop attempting to impose human morality on business, but I digress.