It’s no secret that PlayStation Vita hasn’t exactly been setting tills alight since its western launch in February 2012. However, despite a slow start, Sony remains confident that the platform may yet see a significant surge in sales.
The comments come in light of Sony’s recent forecast of just five million combined sale of PS Vita and PlayStation Portable for FY14.
“Sometimes things can happen and they can dramatically change the evolution in terms of sales of a platform,” said Shahid Kamal Ahmad, senior business development manager for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), during a chat with Gamasutra.
"But what you can never do is say ‘We’re definitely counting for this kind of increase.’ So you can put plans into motion and say ‘We’re trying this approach, that approach,’ and if something comes off, it’s going to be fantastic."
Quizzed if Sony’s five million projection was a ‘worst case scenario,’ he replied:
"Yeah. I mean, I’m probably not the right person to speak to about corporate performance – I’m such a tiny part of the whole organization.
"What I can say is that looking back at the performance of different consoles over the course of history, sometimes you’ve had slow starts which have been suddenly sprung into life by a number of activities.
"What you don’t say ahead of time is, ‘Oh this will and that will happen, and suddenly we’ll have a massive spike in sales.’ It’s not the sort of thing that companies do,” he added.
With PS Vita in quite dire need of some major software releases – with the exception of Killzone Mercenary – all eyes will be on Sony’s E3 press conference to deliver the goods next month.