Does no one else talk about the Vita?

Thought for Friday: I was wondering in the cosmic scheme of things how the Vita is in the mess its in. There's little way to get a finite answer because marketing, presence in stores, perception and other elements are all pretty intangible. Sony may have spent millions marketing the thing, but I rarely ever saw any effort at promotion, and really the issue boils down to user choice.

This little graph from Google Trends shows what people have been talking about in the years around the Vita's life. The 3DS is way ahead, but surprisingly, Android Games has been a more popular search topic. Even more surprisingly, iOS (or iPhone or iPad) games are way down, yet "Vita games" barely registers as a search term.



Try that search with games and its ridiculous, phenomena like Minecraft and Angry Birds dominate, PS3 games like Uncharted 3 get some spikes but there isn't one Vita game that makes a dent. Take out the big ones and leave the Vita games, Persona 4 does really well, but everything else, even exclusives like Tearaway struggle to register.

Borderlands shows what the Vita can do in terms of interest, but that's a viciously steep downslope, which most Vita games suffer from. I won't even show the chart, but GTA on PSP generated more interest than anything the Vita has ever done (and still does). So, people (outside our quirky group of owners) never talked about the Vita, the games made little or no impact and the world didn't care.

Its a shame things ended up that way, but juggling search terms, regions and types and its pretty much the same story, outside Japan. Anyway, on with the gaming for those of us that do care. How do you fix that? Shove a Vita up Justin Bieber's arse? Everyone will want one then!