Some time ago we posted news about the release date for Project Diva f on the PS Vita, which was confirmed to be sometime in March. Sega has now revealed the exact launch date and the price for the game on their official blog.
Project Diva f will launch March 4th in North America and March 12th for Europe. The game will be available on PSN at a price of $29.99. While the game itself won’t have a Cross-Buy option (meaning that if you own the game for PS3, you’ll have to buy it again to play it on the PS Vita), Sega did reveal that the game will be getting a DLC Cross-Buy Promotion. This means that buying the Snow Miku 2013 or the Extra Character Modules DLC for either the PS3 or the PS Vita version of the game automatically makes the DLC available for the game on both platforms. It’s a nice touch, and it gives people a reason to buy the game again for the PS Vita even if they already own it on PS3.
In one of our previous articles we questioned whether or not Sega would release the game at a competitive price point. At $29.99, the answer to that question seems to be yes. Combined with the Cross-Buy promotion, Sega seems to have made a genuine effort to make the English PS Vita version worth buying despite the long wait for the game. Now it’s up to all the fans out there to support the release to convince SEGA to bring over Project Diva F 2nd and other PS Vita games to the West! Will you be buying the game? Let us know in the comments!
I’ll personally be getting this, but I can see several problems this particular release will be facing:
1) Being released a very long time after the PS3 version (fans who bought that version last summer generally won’t care to buy the same game a second time)
2) Being released digital-only (many people care about getting physical copies–especially niche collectors)
3) Being released the same month as the sequel comes out in Japan (so Vita-only owners could just import that instead if they wish)
4) Being released in a relatively busy time for video games in general (January would’ve been a much better window to work with IMO)
Perhaps the game will still sell okay, but it looks like it’ll be a much more uphill struggle than it needed to be. Why the game wasn’t released same time as the PS3 version, I don’t quite grasp (especially when it’s a game meant for handhelds in the first place)–and why it’s taking this long to place it on the PSN store when the game’s already set and localized, I don’t understand either.
And I worry that if it indeed doesn’t sell well, Sega will see this as proof for them to not bother with localizing any other Vita games in the west. T_T