those won't do, as much as I love Tearaway, to average joe, they don't care or not aware of them. Sony really doesn't have the iconic franchise like mario cart or pokemon beside GOW, GT and probably Uncharted, The rest are not even mega huge franchise on the consoles. Would love to see a LOU for vita though
But games like Tearaway definitely have a shot at getting there. LBP is pretty popular as well. But Sony is definitely missing a more Zelda like affair. Tearaway 2 could move into that territory I think. They're trying to address Pokemon with Invisimals, but I don't think that is quite good enough.
Right now, for me Rayman Legends and Spelunky are probably better advocates for the Vita even than LBP though. If they consider an LBP 'Retro' that could be great too. Using old school 2D graphics and limited physics, or maybe Vector graphics only (I loved the LocoRoco engine) with more advanced physics, that would allow stuff spanning from Angry Birds to Loco Roco and old school Mario, but with vector graphics. I asked my 5yo son who is exposed to Mario regularly through friends if he wanted to rather play Mario than Rayman, but he said he liked them both.
Actually based on what they did with crafting in Tearaway, that could be reused for a Vector / 2D(ish) LBP quite well.
Sony doesn't have to cater to everything/everyone, but I think it would benefit them to do more for the younger public, as these will be their future customers, and you can see how many people stay loyal to Nintendo at least partly because of that (at the very least it helps create a positive association with graphics and visual design that are, imho, a very acquired taste ...
).
But to make that a success, they may have to bring out a Vita that looks like a kids toy more. Or gamble that they would make more money making games for cheap Android tablets, of course. This is a difficult choice perhaps.
Anyway, Tearaway is lovely.
Is the 3DS doing gangbusters?
Smart phones, especially iPhones, are getting popular even in Japan. Lot of cheap games for smart phones.
3DS is selling 80k a week at the moment in Japan, and is keeping up fairly well with the original DS I think. Don't know about the rest of the world.