Sony not worried with Japanese Vita sales, satisfaction rate "really high"

SCEA's hardware marketing director John Koller has said the company isn't worried with flagging sales of PlayStation Vita, insisting current word of mouth on the hardware is "really strong."

"If you look at the word-of-mouth factor, it's really strong because people are bringing it home and really enjoying it," he told GameSpot at CES. "That satisfaction rate is really high. But also in terms of when we funnel in additional hardware units, that'll dictate how many sales there are and how many sell through.

"We're still in the first couple weeks, and we're trying to get as many units into market as possible. We're going to give it some time, but overall those numbers have been to forecast."

First week sales for the handheld in Japan were strong at 321,000 units, but a big drop hit for second week sales with 72,500 units. Third and fourth week sales have been at the 40,000 mark since.

But Koller's confident that upcoming first- and third-party content coming to Vita in the future will help drive it, beginning with a launch line-up that is aiming to avoid the same mistake that 3DS had with its launch.

"What we really wanted to do, and I think we learned from past, most recent, handheld device launches, is that you don't want to launch strongly and then go dark for three or four months and have nothing," he said.

"So in subsequent months for Vita, we have launch, then we have MLB, then we got Mortal Kombat, then Resistance, then Little Big Planet, then Call of Duty, and Assassin's Creed."

Vita launches in Europe and the US on February 22. Read our impressions of the hardware here.