Nintendo head of production Shigeru Miyamoto is a swell guy. How do we know? When baited with a chance to badmouth Sony's Vita, he chose diplomacy – even comparing its launch to the rocky launch of Nintendo's 3DS – over the usual corporate chest-pouding we're used to reading. "When we launched the 3DS hardware, we didn't have Super Mario 3D Land, we didn't have Mario Kart 7, we didn't have Kid Icarus: Uprising," Miyamoto told Edge in a recent interview. "We were striving to have all of these ready for the launch, but we weren't able to deliver them at that time," he admitted.

And though Nintendo "were kind of hoping that people would, nevertheless, buy into the product," it was quickly clear that wouldn't be the case. The resultant price drop and subsequent release of the aforementioned titles helped the 3DS build steam, and Miyamoto sees the same scenario playing out for Sony. "It's obviously a very hi-spec machine, and you can do lots of things with it. But I don't really see the combination of software and hardware that really makes a very strong product," he added.

Sony's PlayStation Vita retails for a minimum of $250 currently – the same price the 3DS debuted at – and has at least two notable first-party releases on the horizon for North America: Sound Shapes and Gravity Rush. Sony's latest Vita numbers put the system at over 2 million sold worldwide as of late Feburary this year.

Posted: May 06, 2012 11:27 am

Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/05/04/miyamoto-equates-vitas-bumpy-start-with-that-of-the-3ds/#comments