Sony Plans Biggest Console Marketing Campaign for PlayStation Vita Launch

Video game publisher and hardware maker Sony has announced that it plans to launch the biggest ever marketing campaign linked to the video game console in order to promote the upcoming PlayStation Vita handheld before and during its first few weeks after launch.

John Koller, who is the hardware marketing director working at Sony Computer Entertainment of America, has stated that the value of marketing will reach 50 million dollars (38.02 million Euro) and added that Sony had never allocated as much money to a hardware launch before.

Sony has not offered any value for the marketing campaign that will target European gamers, although historically, the market has been friendlier to PlayStation-branded devices than that of the United States.

Sony has not said whether the marketing effort will include a big push on television and new media or whether the company plans to focus on making the PlayStation Vita visible in retail stores and then relying on word of mouth between gamers to drive up sales.

The PlayStation Vita will be launched in North America and in Europe on February 22 and special VIP packages for a select number of players will be available one week earlier.

The new device has so far been out on the Japanese market since late 2011 and it has failed to light up the market, selling, at times, less than its older cousin, the normal PSP.

Sony has said that sales are within expectations but a lot of analysts are saying that the device needs to perform much better on Western markets in order to have a guaranteed future.

The Nintendo 3DS faced a similar difficult few months when it appeared during last year, but since then the device has managed to top sales charts in Japan and do much better in the rest of the world, after a quick price cut and the launch of some important games, including Mario Kart 7 and a new installment of Monster Hunter.