Sony: we need to do a better job promoting Vita

Sony executive vice president and chief financial officer Masaru Kato has told analysts that the company needs to up its game when it comes to promoting Vita

Yesterday the firm slashed its annual sales forecast for portable hardware from ten million units to seven million, and highlighted “the slow penetration of Vita” as a “particularly important” issue to address.

On the subject of Vita’s struggle in the marketplace, Sony’s Kato said (via Seeking Alpha): "Now one thing clear for us that in terms of profitability, we have to do a better job in promoting the PlayStation Vita mobile product. How do we do that? Well, gaming business software is the name of the game. So as a fundamental measure, we are putting all - a lot of resources, not just first party, but also asking third parties to put out more attractive software."

While first party resources are being focused on titles like Killzone: Mercenary and Tearaway, Kato said other factors like the marketing and pricing of Vita also need to be scrutinised.

"The other thing, well, marketing, pricing of the product, et cetera, I cannot talk about pricing of this platform, but those are the things that we are looking into to improve our profitability in the mobile handheld gaming business."