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Sony president and CEO, Kazuo Hirao, recently took the stage at Sony’s Consumer Electronics Show presentation earlier this week, to show off the company’s latest electronics. Following the presentation, Hirai spoke with the press, where he fielded a few questions, including one about PlayStation Vita sales.
When asked how PlayStation Vita sales were, Hirai responded: “I would say it’s on the low end of what we expected,” adding that he feels it takes 5-10 years before he can say a product has been successful. With regard to year-end holiday sales, Hirai said sales were “pretty much” in line with expectations, pointing out that Sony lowered their sales forecast in November.
November was the second time Sony had to lower their Vita sales forecast. Originally, the company’s goal was to sell 10 million Vitas and 6 million PSPs worldwide by March 31st, 2013. In August, they revised that forecast down to 12 million units of both devices combined, without providing a breakdown of how many sales they expected for PSP and Vita individually.
Finally, November’s revision saw the forecast lowered again, this time to 10 million units combined by March 2013. Once again, no individual expectations for PSP and Vita were provided.
In related news, Vita’s direct competitor, the Nintendo 3DS, recently hit 10 million units sold in Japan alone. As of September 30th, 2012, worldwide 3DS sales were at 22.19 million units. The device should be comfortably over the 25 million mark in worldwide sales by now.
The last sales update we received on the PlayStation Vita was back in August, where Sony revealed that the device had sold 2.2 million units worldwide.
