I defend nothing. I neither work for Sony nor own Sony stock. I'm eminently capable of seeing the Vita's strengths and flaws as a system.
exhashdotdot highlighted my comment that the 3DS started shifting units after it got a price drop and key games and said that the Vita had neither. The Vita has been out 3 months, so a price drop would always be highly unlikely and Nintendo really shocked people by slashing the price after just 4 months.
As for the games, plenty of consoles have launched with poor launch day lineups and have gone on to do just fine. Many "journalists" on gaming sites cited that they thought the Vita's launch day lineup was one of the best, if not the best of any console in history. That is of course entirely subjective. By the end of the 22nd Feb 2012 (launch day) I had 7 Vita games. The problem is that I STILL have 7 Vita games 3 months later.
Nintendo had next to nothing worth playing on the 3DS until Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land and Monster Hunter all landed several months after it's launch. Those coupled with the price drop propelled the 3DS to sell more units in it's first year than the biggest selling handheld in history, the DS. That alone is enough to suggest that handheld gaming, in some form, still has a place.
That to do that cost Nintendo a small fortune is a different matter, it proved that at the right price and with the right content dedicated handhelds can still shift units in the age of the all powerful smartphone.
The Vita IIRC had about 30 games out on launch day, some were ports of existing multiplatform games, some were utter rubbish, and some were new iterations in an existing franchise. The problem is that since launch 3 months ago there has been a drought of new games.
In a weeks time we'll know more about the plans for the Vita between now and Christmas as we are sure to hear more about it at E3.
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