Vita's sales are atrocious. Sony's clumping them with PSP sales to hide them now. You wanna talk about a platform that has NOTHING to offer, it's the Vita. Phenomenal piece of hardware but simply put, no one gives a shit.
I never said they were gonna do bad. They'll easily outsell the Wii U, that's not the question. I mean, we all know the first 5 million of each are already spoken for. That's an OK first year and they'll do that in 3 or 4 months if their production facilities can deliver. What I'm saying is they're gonna take off like gangbusters for a couple of months then have a big drought after the early adopters where they just muddle along for a while. What I'm saying is there really no reason for people to jump, not like there was in the past. I sure as shit ain't considering either this year and I have a ridiculous collection and am very much a hardcore gamer. As are many of my friends, family, and acquaintances in gaming stores.
Moving away from us "hardcores", you will still have the PS3 and Xbox 360 at excellent price points with games that still look and play great. We've never had that before where the previous generation still looked and played great when the new one was coming. There was always that hook over and above the games themselves (NES to SNES = significant jump in sprites, SNES to PS1 = 3D, PS1 to PS2 = MUCH improved graphics and enemy volume and DVD player, PS2 to PS3 = HD and online). Now we literally have nothing, not even a strong launch lineup to get over the nothing else.
This is why I think that the 6 year-old PS3 and 7 year-old 360 will continue to sell pretty well into next year, maybe even matching or surpassing the new consoles after launch. Now, I do concede I could be wrong and people will flock regardless. But the signs just aren't there. We'll see come this time next year whether I'm right or wrong (I'm personally hoping I'm wrong, actually).
And just so there's no confusion over the size of the PC market. I don't care how much you prefer to game on your PC and whether or not it's become your mecha of gaming. From a business perspective, it's a relatively small blip in the overall gaming market (barely over 7% according to this article:
http://www.steamgifts.com/forum/YAKms/2 ... owth-rates). Yes it's growing but it's still relatively minimal when compared to the overall market. Is it influential? Sure, it always was and always will be. It's the hardcores who game on PCs and they're the more likely to get into game development. Not to mention where you learn to program and develop. And considering console architecture is very PC-based now it's easy to see the link. I just don't think that the PC market will ever leak into the casual market. That'll always keep it more of a niche-sized market