But Vita was a catch-22. The proprietary storage format made people not want to support it. Considering the PSP sold 80+ million, it's obvious Vita's failure wasn't so much due to natural dropoff but because Sony themselves screwed something up majorly along the way.
There aren't any conditions in the market where they'd need to risk making that type of design decision screw-up again.
Dude there are a good lot of people who would like a new portable from Sony. Besides, a new Sony portable would potentially light a fire under Nintendo's rear to innovate again with their hardware designs. People always say Sony needs a viable competitor in Microsoft to keep them honest, why is Nintendo exempt from similar? Why should Nintendo failing with a console every other gen (Wii U being the last one) be the catalyst for them to do better with successor hardware? Why would people want Nintendo to risk that happening?
And that's considering a new Sony portable would even be positioned as its own unique device. I'm really just proposing something with PS4 level performance in portable form, for people to take their PS4 library on-the-road, and possibly also stream PS5 games to, potentially opening the brand up for a new market segment that doesn't have to "beat" Nintendo to be successful. It'd serve a specific niche and act as another revenue stream off hardware sales alone, and possibly gain back some Japanese and smaller global indie support that might've gone Nintendo & mobile-only the past decade.
By your logic, there's no reason for a new Xbox, simply because they've been outsold by PlayStation. If Xbox doesn't need to "mop the floor" with PlayStation in console sales to be viable, Sony doesn't need to "mop the floor" with Nintendo in portable sales to have a sustainable portable platform.
Again, you're mistaking me thinking Sony should make a Vita 2. When I say "Sony portable", I mean something with a specific market niche aimed mainly at portable PS4 gaming on-the-go, serving as a streaming option for PS5 games either via Remote Play or through the cloud. If the Spartacus rumors end up true, it could be a great means of modern portability for PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP and PS Vita games, running either locally or streamed. It could even act as a benefit for PSVR2.
And possibly, for developers who still want to develop cross-gen games for PS4 and PS5 a while longer, it could give them a larger market segment for PS4 version of those games since a new portable offering native PS4 performance and compatibility gives that game a new way to be played, via in portable format on a dedicated portable device. PS4 is still selling strong at $299 and that's at a for-profit MSRP. Depending on volume of production for a portable, they could price it at $299 two years from now (when it'd launch) at slight profit, or potentially a higher price like $349 or $399 depending on certain features, or even $249 if they wanted to be very aggressive with large volumes (though I don't see that being a likely price point).
This strategy basically means Sony wouldn't need to make content specifically for the portable; think of it how Nintendo handles software development for the Switch. That's a hybrid system so it's technically a portable & a home console (when docked), but they aren't making a specific Mario platformer for the portable and another for the console. It's the same one game, you can just choose to play it on a docked console or take it on the go.
Same strategy here for Sony, except now you're talking about software already made with cross-gen in mind, that can either run on a dedicated console (PS4, PS4 Pro, PS5) or a portable (a new Sony portable). Current-gen games could run on the portable via Remote Play or cloud streaming. That way developers can still focus on just one hardware spec (PS5) and Remote Play/cloud streaming will handle functionality of that game on the portable device.
As for the purpose, well I just went over use-cases, but if you want some comparisons, it's basically a cross between Microsoft's strategy with the XBO and Series S. For current-gen MS games going forward, play on XBO systems is going to be handled via the cloud streaming. For Series S, native downscaled versions are made. Sony may not want to complicate the dev pipeline with yet another device that would need a native port, but if it's capable enough for Remote Play and cloud streaming, that brings in a value proposition for people who may want to take their PS5 content on the road as long as they're okay with cloud streaming (or Remote Play, including maybe a way where remote PS5s can act as access server points for user library content if they back that content/library up to the cloud).
I don't see how Japan is "lost" to Sony necessarily when they're already at 1+ million there, and they've signed commercial contracts with the biggest pop star in the country. The way this generation's going, if they keep pace with unit deliveries they should at least match PS4's numbers in the region. But supposing they can't, and supposing that market is open for a portable that could provide streaming of PS5 software content (as well as portability for PS4 games), then a new portable device would be a great option to have.
Sony may not necessarily want or need such a portable device, whose main purpose is to extend functionality and use-cases of legacy software content (and provide streaming of new software content), to sell in volumes similar to what the PSP did in its day. Basically, take what volume numbers they have for the PS4, and convert them to this hypothetical device. That's what possible numbers would potentially look like, especially if they place it as something with decent profit margins (at $349 - $399, it would definitely provide good profit margins off the hardware alone, mimicking Nintendo's strategy). In actuality they would likely sell notably higher numbers than that.
And if Sony can provide more PS5 units of manufacture to meet that demand, then the portable idea becomes redundant. But if that can't happen, then possibly a portable can fit into the picture.
Products don't always bomb because they're bad ideas, but rather they could have been introduced at the wrong time, or marketed the wrong way. Pricing, etc. could have been culprits. A new portable device with Vita's strengths and none of its weaknesses could possibly find good market success in today's market, especially since it's mainly going to serve as a means for functionality of legacy content.
It's a bit disingenuous to use Stadia as an example for why Sony's approach wouldn't work. Stadia had marketing issues, pricing issues, and nowhere near the brand power of PlayStation or a company behind it with even a fraction of gaming market experience as Sony.
People opting for a Series S or X, as you even said, doesn't mean they won't pick up a PS5 when it becomes available and they're able to buy one. Also, console sales maybe not meeting targets due to manufacturing constraints doesn't mean Sony are losing money, which is ultimately what's most important here. Even with having to cut down expected PS5 production numbers last year, they reach a new fiscal year revenue for the division of $27 billion.
That means people in the ecosystem of PS5s are mainly those willing to buy a lot of software, and are the ones with the highest attach ratios. Those still on PS4, apparently it's a good lot of them still buying software for it, and those that are, are also most likely to invest in a PS5 once it's available. In a way not being able to meet even higher manufacturing targets for PS5s is a bit of a benefit since it means reduced operating income for the PlayStation division, and again even in spite of that they've been able to set higher and higher revenue and profit margins every quarter.
It's almost as if console sales aren't the most important thing at play here, and I know I've said this before about Xbox. Not going to suddenly say something different now that Sony's the subject, though yes I'm sure they would like to manufacture more consoles and are itching at the chance to be able to do so.
Except we already have examples where Series X clearly is not the target platform. Actually, it's not even so much about the target platform, but whether the platform which is the target is able to be leveraged by the developer to maximize what's delivered, and a lot of that comes down to developer competency along with tool optimizations.
And I guess for that, yes we'll have to see what happens. We should probably be asking ourselves how the power in these machines will be leveraged because if we're talking about anything beyond texture resolutions, framerates or output resolution targets, the computational differences between the Series S GPU and Series X GPU DO begin to come into the picture as a potential complication which could cut down on games leveraging that type of computational power in Series X for things like asynchronous compute tasks, because the Series S's GPU simply has less CUs to work with.
Therefore any game logic or tasks needing X amount of GPU computational resources for asynchronous compute tasks, will always have X less resources for the task on Series S than the Series X. I mentioned a long time ago that maybe some of these type of tasks can be scaled in volume for the smaller GPU, and I still think that may end up being the case. If so, then my concerns on this topic are unnecessary. However, I do need to at least see a game release demonstrating these ideas/theories in practice in order to prove such to be the case, and we haven't had one yet.
Let's hope Starfield is the first such example, though that's doubtful given they probably would have only stopped work on multiconsole development sometime in 2021, once the deal actually closed, and therefore focus on such versions up to that point might've prevented focus on the things I've been discussing in the past couple paragraphs.
Actually no they haven't quite. At various points last year Series X was VASTLY undersupplied compared to demand, and we know this because Microsoft were taking some of those Series X units for their own Azure servers. This didn't start to cease until late Summer last year.
If Sony really are expanding their cloud capacities for bigger server loads, that means they'd have to divert some PS5s to said server clusters (even if they're using Azure, which IIRC they still aren't quite doing yet). If they can only secure say 20% more wafers when adding on a Series S-style model to the product line, and they need 20% of their PS5s manufactured to go into servers, that reduces PS5s for the consumer market to 80%, when it could've been 100%. If demand is already at, say, 150%, then in this example they're underserving demand by 70% when they could've reduced that amount to 30%.
If only a fraction of, say, 5% out of that want a PS5 Series S-style device, now Sony have a 15% oversupply of that model, that could end up selling way more slowly (relatively speaking) than if those were PS5 models. It's a complicated logistics game to manage, and the customer base in Sony's domain in terms of early-gen adopters may not have the same preferences on that front as those Microsoft could be targeting.
I'm saying that by the time they may be able to increase PS5 Digital volume at mass, they could potentially reduce the price slightly to put pressure on Series S pricing, as long as it would mean Sony doesn't lose a lot of money on PS5 Digital as a result.
PS Classic was a cluster because of the selection partly, and also because of technical issues with the emulator used. That has no bearing on a new portable initiative in all honesty. I'm glad you mentioned PC, because that IS another option.
However, because Sony wouldn't want to risk reducing loss of percentage cuts from 3P software in the PlayStation ecosystem due to PS power users jumping to PC for content if it were provided Day 1 (as an example), they in fact won't do Day 1 for the majority of their titles, IMO, until they can secure their own storefront and monetize it (through subscription types, and/or ad-supported model too) outside of just pure software sales.
And I honestly don't think they would ever do Day 1 in a sense of all 1P in a subscription service the way Microsoft does with GamePass, not unless they can do so on a per-game basis, likely through game-specific contract-based subscriptions with monthly payment fees up until the cost of the software is paid off for. It is probably the best option for Day 1 into a service for new 1P software for Sony and other major 3P releases TBH, in a means that Sony can sustain and make work for their size and business strategy (they aren't like Microsoft where potential losses in software sales and such can be tanked by sheer corporate size and other divisions pulling in magnitudes more revenue & profit).
I think we'll just need to agree to disagree here because you've really missed my point on the actual use-cases for this hypothetical Sony portable.
However if we're on the subject of a PS5 "Series S" that could potentially feasibly work, I think there is an option: keep PS5 performance targets (10.23 TF, same pixel/texture fillrate, geometry culling/rasterization rate, RT perf, RAM capacity, bandwidth, SSD I/O etc.), remove the Blu-Ray drive and skip the internal NAND for everything but a chip for OS restore partition.
Instead, just use an M.2 SSD with about 128 GB of storage, and let it be upgradable same as regular PS5's. Also perhaps have it operate at more modest performance levels, but again since it'd be upgradeable it would not be a too big an issue because the SSD I/O still has the exact same performance as the regular PS5's. That probably allows them to mass-produce the PS5 Digital with much better margins (they at most lose only a fraction on each unit sold) and can keep it at $399, potentially even $349 a little while later possibly timed with a price cut of PS5 physical to $449 (you wouldn't see these price cuts for either PS5 until probably late 2024 at earliest, or even later than that in all honesty).