Goddamnit, Atlus, I Don't Have Money or Time

While the actual content of the Playstation Store Update today is a little lackluster (Unless you like MMA, or are interested in Closure), it did bring with it the above Atlus price drops on virtually all of their PSP games which have, as you can see, hovered around full price for a while now.  Being a Price Drop event, it certainly means that we shouldn't expect the prices to go back up, as if it were a sale, but at the same time, these are fantastic prices for really good games and I want them.  Like all of them.  Maybe.  Definitely the Persona games (I might, in fact, bite on P3P tonight since I still have $20 in my PSN Wallet after buying Final Fantasy 7, 8 and 9 on sale last week in preparation for PSOne support on the Vita) and the allure of "Kenka Bancho Badass Rumble" is strong, what with being likely the closest I'll ever get to a Yakuza game on PSP (and Vita for now).  Since it is a brawler in at least a similar vein, I believe, or at least that's what "Badass Rumble" would suggest to me, along with seeing a bit of it back in the day.

In all honesty, though, now that I think about it, the only games I really know anything worth measuring about are the Persona ones, Kenka Bancho, and a little of Class of Heroes where the rest might as well be a complete mystery to me.  For some reason, I think I remember holding Knights in the Nightmare in my hands a few times because it came with a free digital copy of a game (Might've even been Yggdra Union), but I never bit and I guess this would be why.  Also the fact that I think it coins itself as a Bullet Hell SRPG, which I don't even....I can't really grasp that.  Really something of a "Not sure if want" situation and maybe if I find myself with a surplus of cash, I'll jump into it, but I don't foresee that happening, so it will likely go as an unknown quantity to me for a while yet.

The fact is that I'm going to buy the Persona games.  Not all at once, not right away, but eventually.  After Eternal Punishment comes over along with Persona 4:  The Golden, I, like many others, dream to have a Vita that is full of every Persona title in the series.  If just because it's a possibility, rather than a practicality.  But the fact that they're all very good games in their own legitimate ways certainly helps, of course.  It may be a little excessive, especially when I question my ability to play the titles before 3 since their gameplay is apparently....aherm, 'dated', considering how old they are, but I do plan on giving them all a fair shake.  Being that I've already given Persona 3 a shake, technically speaking, it should be easy enough to do the others since I liked P3 minus the OCD that came over me, making me want to get the best of everything on the first run which, as we know, is a fool's errand.  -I- even know it, but it didn't stop me from trying like crazy, mind you, and ultimately souring the game for myself a bit in the process.  Hopefully with P3P's different take, it won't be so bad and I'll be able to actually relax with it some.

The real wrinkle here is that, like so many other PSP games, it seems Persona 1 and Persona 3 Portable are just not in the Vita's version of the Playstation Store.  Apparently, if you buy it on your PS3, you can check your download list and download at least P3P right there (likely the same with Persona 1 as well, since it seems as if there was just a delisting error with the price change with those two as several people have claimed both games were on the store prior to today) on your Vita without having to deal with the work around a good portion of PSP games require in downloading the game to your PS3 first and then transferring it over.  Of course, this is something that can be remedied and likely will be eventually, but for those that don't have the convenience of owning a PS3, it's a rather large hurdle, so large that it is in fact impassable.  Which is terribly unfortunate.

Still, as I said, the wording of "Price Drop" seems to indicate that these are, indeed, the new prices for the games from this day forward, thus not necessitating any form of a rush.  There's no subtext, no asterisks, nothing pointing out that it's a limited time deal or anything of the sort, so for the folks who can't really capitalize at the moment aren't missing out too badly.  Of course, if they want to play Persona 3 Portable right now, or one of the other similarly inaccessible titles, they're fairly out of luck for now, but again, here's hoping that that's cleared up swiftly, if the rumblings of the games actually being on the store before today were correct.  The question for me, however, is whether or not I have the fortitude to resist buying anything included, because I have entirely too many other games to focus on currently.  My window for completing Yakuza:  Dead Souls is...looking pretty good, actually, as the temperatures don't look all too hot for the coming week.  But it won't last like that for long, and once that closes off, I still do have three Vita games to keep me busy, technically.  With more coming in the next few months, even.  The point is, as I've made it several times before, there are simply too many games this year.

3DS Price Drop = Fanboy Raaaaaaage

I'm sure you've heard about it by now, either from Joystiq, another awesome blog, or Nintendo themselves, but the 3DS is going to drop to a 'reasonable' price come August 12th.  That's right, a scant four months after release, a price drop of Eighty Dollars has been scheduled to hit in under six months into the system's lifespan.  This is....well, for Nintendo, I'm pretty sure this is fairly unprecedented, and to most people, it could be seen as a bad sign, but come on.  This is fucking Nintendo; the 3DS wasn't going to push them out of handheld relevancy, nor was/is the Vita.  It was only a matter of how friendly this new climate of the Portable Wars would be to the Vita in regards to the juggernaut that is Nintendo's Handheld dominance.

And news of this price drop just makes the Sony side of the battlefield seem a little darker.

Yes, I stole this from Chance.  I regret nothing!

Which, I'm sure we can all understand that's exactly why Nintendo did this.  Sure, the 3DS isn't selling like hotcakes - but it was always going to.  It's a self-fulfilling prophecy that if you release a nintendo handheld, it will sell to people.  But this move just makes it seem like Nintendo's jumping the gun for very arbitrary reasons.  Well, from a purely consumer-oriented standpoint, that is.  It makes fairly sound business sense, Nintendo's moves usually do, but not as much sense as another, different move that we all expected would have.

I, as I'm sure most people, expected Nintendo to drop the price to $199.99 out of the blue, right before the Holiday rush to capitalize on the most sales as possible.  Quite simply because you don't announce a price cut in advance.  Which, hey, Nintendo did.  Doing that would have made sense, because, hey, it would've spurned on sales a bunch, moreso than it would have without the price drop.  And nobody ever expected the 3DS to go up against the Vita at the same price, unless Nintendo did a two game bundle or something.  "Increased value" and the like.

But a price drop this severe, this early, and this, honestly, poorly-thought-out is just really weird, really frustrating for anyone hoping the Vita would've had even ground from the start, since it just shifts the playing field for no other reason than to do it.  And it's really hard to actually say this is a bad move, because it really isn't, it's just a move that I, someone who you all know is looking forward to the Vita like a man obsessed, don't like because it's going to screw over the Vita in some fashion, whether it be just a mild effect, or whether it inspires DS vs. PSP levels of distrust all over again.

Basically, the core of my thinking, which is just what I should say to put it out there, rather than attempt dancing around it, is that this is the equivalent of Nintendo, in a Sports Car, shooting out the tires of Sony, in a....I don't know, a non-sports car before a race.  It's an unnecessary level of insurance that will have absolutely no real repercussions on Nintendo, because it's not a matter of People weren't sold on the 3DS, they were simply biding their time.  The Vita isn't as guaranteed to sell as the 3DS is.  So to do this, to cut the price of the 3DS so low that they're not even making a profit on it anymore, is unthinkable and honestly frustrating, as I can't stop saying.

I admit I'm openly flying my fanboy flag here; though I'm not saying it's specifically for Sony (even though well, I do swing more to the Sony side than anything as my lack of a current gen console other than the PS3 will attest to), but it's really for the Vita, simply because it's a nice device that I know will have games I want because Sony just so happens to have some great first and second party studios who are willing and ready to support this thing.  As long as it sells.  Which might just be in question now.

Sure, Nintendo's going to garner some flak from the 'Gamers-in-the-know' in a sense, but they're not actually doing a lot wrong here.  If you buy the 3DS before August 12th, you get free games for being a 3DS 'Ambassador'.  If you buy it after August 12th, you save $80.  For anyone involved, this is pretty much win-win, save Nintendo as, again, they'll be selling 3DS's at a (likely marginal) loss.  But they'll make it up and then some, so we don't have to worry about them.  It's just a weird situation.  Certainly not one I could've expected, and certainly not one I like.  We'll just have to see what sort of impact it has.

Edit:  For some reason, I kept typing September 12th instead of August 12th.  I blame rage.  Fixed now, though.