I follow the tech press pretty closely for a bunch of reasons, and if you look at the top of some of the tech pages, you wouldn't even know the PS Vita existed today. Take a look yourselves. This is on the front page of
VentureBeat, even though the site has a Vita story down the page...
This is
the front of Techmeme, which aggregates what the tech press is saying, no sign of the Vita anywhere (at the time of writing). Search the site for PS Vita and you have about one story a week appearing.
And this is TechCrunch, one of the biggest tech sites on the planet. It too has a story, that the Vita is a tablet alternative, duh!
Basically, whatever Sony is doing marketing the Vita, it is somehow managing to ignore, confuse or overshoot a whole section of the online press that somehow manages to get excited about a fledging social service, some silly spectacles and other nonsense.
Sure the Vita can't hope to compete with iPad 3 mania, but you would have thought that by getting the Vita into some of the
right hands early, it could generate some excitement and attention from the press which drives the digital device agenda, get it mentioned in the "hot" categories and not just as an afterthought.
By failing to excite these sites (which is different to merely sending them a unit and some press releases), the Vita will likely get ignored by a whole section of geeks - the same people who drove a novelty music player to the legend that is the iPod etc etc. Perhaps it is the "only for games" focus that puts Sony down the list here - but with the specialist gaming press dying on its backside - Sony needs to find the news where it can, which is right here in the sites above and its not happening.
You can't not read about the Vita outside the games press, but that is preaching to the converted. To get new players on board, Sony needs to touch the wider tech press who can expose it to a whole new audience, who if they get excited about every tiny iteration of a phone update, should be delighted to see something new and wholly different.
Just a thought.
