So why has the Vita tanked so hard? Software support? Bad launch? Bad follow-up? Lacking first-party support? Is it that the market for a portable game system is smaller or more confined to younger players? Too many people playing games on their phones instead?
It checked off so many of the boxes people cited as the reason the PSP didn't gain traction against Nintendo. It had the dual analog sticks, it launched with some big IPs (and had Call of Duty, too), the price....was...well, it got better. It does Remote Play for PS4 (though I've never been able to get it working reliably, personally).
The PSTV didn't even do jack. It's kind of the most amazing stab at a market from a platform holder with dominance in one area that's completely unable to do anything in the other. Despite pretty good hardware.
I think it was terrible timing for the Vita.
To start with it was coming off the PSP and PS3, which despite selling 80+ million each did not leave a very good impression. I think some polls showed most developers expected the Xbox One (or "3" at the time) to kill the PS4; that was the kind of faith people had in Sony at the time. The Vita wasn't even considered, everyone expected it to fail and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The state of the industry was right in the middle of the transition it went through last gen, with middle tier disappearing and AAA games getting bigger in budget (and fewer being made). We've seen a recovery from this trend with self publishing of smaller and even mid tear games on the growth of digital, but by the time that recovery actually made an impact on the Vita (with its indie games) the fate of the system had already been written.
This quote from Peter Moore sums up the AAA problem (it's from Gamescom 2015 but he's been saying it for years): "Eight years ago when I joined EA, we were publishing 70 games a year. 70. And this year we might do twelve". When you go from 70 to 12 what gets cut is your DS and PSP spin-offs. If Dead Space can't exist on consoles anymore it's not a Medal of Honor spin-off for Vita that's going to make the cut. The Vita needed digital games to be there at the beginning, and to be much bigger than they were back in 2011.
Another noticeable thing is that it was right in the middle of SCEA/SCEE wrestling control of the business from the Japanese side. A lot of the Vita was quite clearly made for Japan at a time most people knew they were out of touch with the rest of the world. Then of course it failed there simply because they allowed Nintendo to steal Monster Hunter exclusivity.
There's also the issue of SCEA not ever really "getting it" when it comes to handhelds. Until a few years ago at least they were pretty much *all* about games being big and cinematic, a terrible mix with handheld. When your Vita marketing campaign is basically "it's not as good as your PS3 but it's the closest you'll get!" you're not really going anywhere. If you look at markets in Europe like Spain the Vita actually does *incredibly* well.
The Vita TV was a decent idea but it needed a significant push to have a chance of being successful. Take Amazon: they put money into their Fire TV thing but they don't have a brand powerful enough to push it, while Sony has the brand but they can't afford to make a real effort. I mean, when you release something called Playstation TV and you can't afford a Netflix contract for it, what the hell are you doing?
