14 DAY TRIAL // Shuhei Yoshida, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment worldwide studios has weighed in on the two major announcements made by Nintendo in regards to its 3DS, the price cut made back in August and the more recent circle pad add-on.
The last couple of weeks have been filled with announcements for the PlayStation Vita and 3DS, as both Sony and Nintendo have released quite a few details about the future of their two handheld platforms.
Now, after announcing the full technical specs as well as some of the 100 games that will be available during the launch window of the Vita, Sony has shared its insight into the recent news concerning the 3DS and how they relate to the Vita.
First up, Yoshida talked with Game Informer about the price cut made for the platform, which led to a massive increase in sales back in August.
"I don't personally believe that they dropped the price of the 3DS to respond to our pricing," the Sony executive said. "We didn't price PS Vita to their price, either. We had that plan since the last couple years.My personal guesstimate is that they have their business plan and goals to sell a certain amount of 3DS units, and they realised post-launch was that the pricing was not helping them to achieve the goal that they set. That's my estimate."
Yoshida then weighed in on the new circle pad add-on, which was confirmed before the start of the 2011 Tokyo Games Show last week, and will be used by new titles like Monster Hunter 3 or 4.
"Well it's not like they looked at PS Vita and said 'we need to do that as well'," he said. "I don't know. It's clear that they didn't believe a second analogue was necessary when they designed the 3DS, so I can only guess it was requested by Capcom's side."
"Maybe a Capcom producer told Nintendo that to play Monster Hunter we need [two] analogue sticks. That I don't know, so I can only guesstimate," he added. "It was a bit shocking to see what they came up with."
The Nintendo 3DS is now on sale, while the PlayStation Vita is scheduled to arrive on December 17, in Japan, and early 2012, in the rest of the world.