A vita neo wouldn't be more effort than say a new smartphone upgrade. I still don't see Sony bothering though.
That's kind of my thinking for the viability of a "PS Vita Neo" ... not that it'd be some grand revival of the Vita or anything grandiose, but that they're continuing to manufacture it anyway, so hey, why continue to manufacture it to be less than it can be? Almost 5 years now after Vita's launch, Sony might even be spending as much on the older components in there as it would if it swapped in newer and better equivalents. And Sony is set upon changing expectations of the console market by incrementing for the first time, the portable market has already experienced increments and has yet to reject the business approach (granted, it's mostly Nintendo's success story, but do Lynx v2 and NGPC and WSC not count?), so what's reasonable for one platform could be reasonable for both. Making a better Vita might at some point make better business sense than making the old Vita.
There's logistical reasons why they can't just clock up and plug in more RAM and have a Vita Neo (and in an
out-of-my-mind-bored GAF thread where I pitched a Vita Neo, people schooled me on the economics of going to manufacturing with a component swap,) but I still feel that some no-exclusives approach back to market with a handheld would make some sense for Sony some day, especially now that Nintendo is apparently bridging the mobile/TV gap and Apple and Google are so interested in mixing the spaces.
The PS4 Portable idea in the OP might be feasible several years down the line. New lower-end games (like indies) would also probably run on it. If Sony makes the Neo the beginning of a family of devices all sharing the same library, a portable form factor could fit in with that. That way the portable would at least have an appealing software library.
Ultimately I'd like maybe a point system for what kind of PS systems games will run on, sort of like what MS tried with the Minimum Specs Rating years ago.
...A game that earns a #1 could play on anything: PS4 the console, some kind of PS portable, the Neo of course (and the majority of games would fall into that space, or try to have a "#1 Mode" that's a compromised version of the game but playable on all hardware.)
...A game with a #2 would be maybe too powerful for the portable but would play on all your PS4s.
...A game with a #3 rating would only be compatible with the next-generation technology of Neo (and would ideally be rare for a good long time...)
...And then some day there's a PS5 as well as a #3-level PS portable, and they could both play those 'old' Neo games but PS5 would play its brand-new #4 games. And so on...
