Playstation Vita Same Price As 3DS – Nintendo Couldn’t Care Less

For those who have been strictly coming to us for all your E3 news, you may have missed the fact that the Playstation Vita, formally know as the NGP, is priced at 249$. You’ll notice this presently matches the price of the Nintendo 3DS. Some have speculated that Nintendo may lower the price of the 3DS even a little just so it has the price edge on one of their top competitors in the hand held market, but those people clearly do not know Nintendo.

“I think if you give people enough reasons to buy, eventually they will. We’re not too concerned about the long term viability of the platform.” – Nintendo’s Charlie Scibetta

Touche Nintendo. Wait, Charlie isn’t finished:

“If we give them good enough content,” he said, success will follow. “I’ll keep coming back to the games, and we’ve got the experiences that will appeal.”

“We certainly wouldn’t change our strategy or our approach based on what a competitor is doing.” The company will “continue to innovate… and encourage our third party developers to take advantage of the system.”

This is one extremely hot topic we haven’t touched base on in all of our coverage, but we’re going to make up for that right now. Look, the PS Vita is a very intriguing console. The back touch panel has shown to provide some unique experiences you cannot get on a Nintendo handheld, and it’s definitely peaking interest levels. In addition to that, it’s a fully DLC based system (making it cheaper to distribute games), and it’s graphic capabilities is “almost” on par with the present console generation. All that for the same price as a 3DS.

The 3DS has some nice graphics, but they look like the Wii compared the PS3 for comparison sake. The 3DS has 3D, but many gamers have expressed how unneeded it really is. Sure, I love Ocarina of Time 3D in 3D the entire time, but that doesn’t necessarily make the game better. 3DS’s big advantage is it has Nintendo, and Nintendo knows how to make games for that on the go gamer better than most people. Oh, and Pokemon. Yeah, people seem to like that game.

The reaction is pretty standard from Nintendo however. In the end, the system with better software will sell the most, and right now the PS Vita definitely appears to have the better software at the moment, and likely will feature a better launch lineup. The 3DS has a few heavy hitters coming, but there doesn’t appear to be a lot coming that were aware of after that, and the third parties have been lack luster at best so far. What do you think of this competition?

Source: Gamasutra