Fewer than 8 percent of Japanese consumers want to buy a PlayStation Vita or a Wii U, according to a recent survey conducted by online firm Goo Research. This is the third such survey in a row to report a decline in interest.
Among the 1083 people surveyed, 701 (64.7%) said they owned at least one video game console. From that group, 61.6% said they owned a Nintendo DS (this included all iterations, including the 3DS), followed by PlayStation 2 (50.5%), Nintendo Wii (50.1%), PlayStation Portable (32.4%), and PlayStation 3 (28.1%). Only 18 people (2.6%) said they owned a Vita. These figures have remained relatively stable over the months.
When asked "would you like to buy a PlayStation Vita?" only 7.8% of 1065 people said they did. 31.7% responded that they were curious about the Vita but did not plan to buy one. 60.5% said they had no interest whatsoever.
These numbers jibe with the weekly sales figures coming out of Japan that show Vita purchases stagnating since its 2011 launch. Vita is routinely outsold by its predecessor the PSP and rival 3DS.
Nintendo's forthcoming Wii U did not fare any better in this opinion poll. 7.1% of 1083 asked said they wanted to buy a Wii U, 33.5% were curious but did not plan to buy, and 59.4% showed no interest at all. This is for a console without a set release date or price, but those are low numbers given the evergreen popularity of Nintendo's games and consoles.
The survey also included questions about Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play, an Android smartphone that plays PlayStation games. Not a single respondent owned one, only 2.8% said they wanted to buy one, and 79.8% said they were not interested in the device.
