This year should have been Vita's coming out party.
Sony should have rolled out the metaphorical red carpet to current Vita owners, underscoring why Vita was a worthy purchase, one to pay dividends with quality software for months and years. The press conference didn't drive that point home.
It felt like Vita was just one more thing, not a focus.
Shuhei Yoshida is PlayStation's head of worldwide studios, and he's well aware of that perception.
"I got a lot of tweets," he told me during an interview yesterday.
Yoshida is active on Twitter, which means he's quick to hear from super passionate fans.
"I think that's our fault to not be able to meet expectations," he said. "I understand. We really tried hard this year in terms of planning the conference to make it shorter. We've been criticized and made fun of! Our marketing department said we're going to make it short and sweet, and we were really selective in terms of what to show."
When you walk through Sony's booth, there's a respectably wide-ranging lineup of games coming to Vita, from Sound Shapes to Frobisher Says! to Snapshot. None of those showed up at the press conference, which Yoshida blamed on the many topics Sony's forced to cover during its event.
"We could have focused more on new, exciting PS Vita titles," he said. "That's our fault."
And unless I'm mistaken, there was nary a mention of 3D during the press conference. Much of Sony's event last year was actually in 3D, and there was a big push to show how much Sony was getting behind it. No more?
"While I was waiting for the show to start, I was watching the Twitter feed and one journalist tweeted: 'thank god there's no 3D glasses.'" he said. "I showed it to Mr. Kaz Hirai and he laughed. What's happening with 3D is that it's no longer new."
It appears 3D has been reduced to a bullet point. Yoshida would not confirm what games from Sony, like Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, would be actively supporting 3D. Expect that number to drop off, though.
"I think that initial evangelizing period is over," he said.
