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[Sakura]

In Japan, the vita is generally outselling the new3DS on a weekly basis at this point.

No it's not. Unless you are ignoring the N3DSLL for some reason.

I see "console on the go" used as a negative, but what else was Vita suppose to do?

A 3DS clone? That makes two identical handhelds and Sony already made the PSP anyway (which 3DS is closer to).
A phone? Sony tried those with the Xperia/psp hybrids which didn't take off.

The console on the go was the only lesser of two evils where Vita could actually succeed anywhere.

I'm not sure what you mean.
What are the Xbox One and PS4 then? What were the 360 and PS3? Are they not consoles with mostly the same libraries and similar visuals, competing with each other?
The Vita could've competed with the 3DS better, and maybe it would've gained more market share. If there wasn't enough room to compete, then it could simply not exist.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

#1 - Price. $250 + the price of an expensive memory card was noticeably more expensive than the 3DS which had gotten a major price drop recently and used cheap generic memory cards.

#2 - Power. Although the Vita was substantially more powerful than the 3DS, since the Vita is a fixed platform and had to be sold around cost (instead of subsidized with stuff like subscription plans), it didn't take long for phones to match and eventually exceed it in power.

#3 - Library. Big Western companies don't like portables so that leaves Japanese companies & indies. Japanese companies are focused on trying to make big blockbusters that appeal worldwide (consoles + PC) or addictive mobile games. The big portable series flocked to the 3DS (see Monster Hunter & most of Atlus & SE's portable output). As a result, that left mostly mid-tier Japanese companies which make games that don't really appeal worldwide which is why the Vita was so much more popular in Japan than overseas.

People complain that Sony didn't really support the system much, but you know what? I can think of 4 AAA (for portable) IPs that they released for the system - Gravity Rush, Tearaway, Soul Sacrifice, and Freedom Wars. Two of those IPs were critically acclaimed but bombed badly (GR & Tearaway) & the other two were popular in Japan but not so much elsewhere. Besides those new IPs, they also released a few sequels/spin-offs in the form of Uncharted: GA, Killzone: Mercs, and Oreshika.

 

[DrROBschiz]

Sony losing Monster Hunter was a big one.

But the biggest reason Vita failed at launch was because of the mad prices of the memory cards. There was quite a bit of hype behind the Vita before that happened. But quite many were not ready to pay a hundred bucks for 32 GB of memory! What were they thinking? It's even worse because you need a big memory card to hold games, so these memory cards encourage people to buy less games.



Vita's power may have been worth €250 for many people, that wasn't the problem. The fucking memory cards though.

Yup

Could not believe they would create such an antithetical setup to the core use of the system

Like.. the draw is digital software which sold at respectable volumes and attach rates.... and yet they never reacted by dropping memory prices

TO THIS DAY

Insane

 

[outunderthestars]

Gaming on the go is satisfactory enough for most people on this:

This right here. The Vita was marketed at a demographic that is perfectly fine playing games on their phones.

 

[Abdiel]

Look, everyone regurgitating the memory card line really doesn't get it. It sucks for those of you who have mild interest in the system but don't want to pay for the extra expense. But guess what, that's not why the vita failed. The vita failed because the market for it doesn't exist. Well, practically, anyway. The market for it has been consumed by other products, and there's not enough audience to garner any attention. Even at launch, no one gave a shit.

Seriously, memory cards would be a problem to overcome if you have consumer interest in the first place. That never happened. I assume that Sony never really dropped the card pricing because it at least still makes money, so they aren't hemorrhaging money. No one cares about the system. It's ignored on our shelves.

And I love my vita. I do. But the stuff people say Sony should have done would all have been idiotic business moves. None of them would have made any difference. The vita was doomed from launch. Which sucks, but it's true

 

[Deleted member 752119]

1. It really had no market for what it was. They touted it as console games like Uncharted and Killzone. People want to play those games on their big screens. Especially in the west. A lot of portable gamers are drawn to handhelds as they don't care for the console AAA scene and like that portables have more old school types of games.

2. It was priced too high. The 3DS also struggled before its $80 price drop.

3. The stupid expensive memory cards.

4. They really got hurt by the move to mobile. That was good enough for gaming on the go for a lot of adult gamers. Nintendo got hit less hard as they have a stronger portable market of kids and diehard fans with games like Pokemon that can't be played anywhere else.

5. As support dried up and it started mostly getting indies and niche Japanese which just aren't popular among core gamers and that hurt its image. Especially the waifu games.

 

[shandy706]

1. Games - no quality titles or remakes of masterpieces as proof of its power.

Uncharted

Unit 13

MLB The Show

Wipeout 2048

Killzone

Persona 4

Madden

Final Fantasy X/X-2

Need For Speed: Most Wanted

Rayman: Origins

FIFA

Hot Shots Golf

?


If they had done proper marketing/advertising completely separate from the home consoles and gone without stupid expensive memory, it could have done great.

Because Gran Turismo never released for it.

I'm still so freaking pissed about this!

 

[Champion]

Those AWFUL memory card prices hurt the system too.

 

[dragonyeuw]

Look, everyone regurgitating the memory card line really doesn't get it. It sucks for those of you who have mild interest in the system but don't want to pay for the extra expense. But guess what, that's not why the vita failed. The vita failed because the market for it doesn't exist. Well, practically, anyway. The market for it has been consumed by other products, and there's not enough audience to garner any attention. Even at launch, no one gave a shit.

Seriously, memory cards would be a problem to overcome if you have consumer interest in the first place. That never happened. I assume that Sony never really dropped the card pricing because it at least still makes money, so they aren't hemorrhaging money. No one cares about the system. It's ignored on our shelves.

And I love my vita. I do. But the stuff people say Sony should have done would all have been idiotic business moves. None of them would have made any difference. The vita was doomed from launch. Which sucks, but it's true

Basically this.

 

[ChronotriggerJM]

I don't think memory card prices had much to do with anything. The digital market was smaller than the physical, and I'd wager most bundles had plenty of memory. An early accessory pack had a case, screen protector, cable and 4gb card for like 12 bucks. Which would have been plenty of space for your average physical media purchaser.

It just didn't have Nintendo's following, and it was far less convenient than a mobile phone.

 

[Valkyr1983]

Thinking about grabbing a Vita slim new while they are still around

It feels like it might be the last of its kind and I've always wanted a portable

Was leaning between that or a 3ds or whatever is next from Nintendo

Is Vita worth it for PS1 classics, indie games and other random ports? Like would love to play Duke 3d on the go

Can you still get Vita new in brick and mortar stores? I don't order online...

 

[ZombiePlatypus]

Look, everyone regurgitating the memory card line really doesn't get it. It sucks for those of you who have mild interest in the system but don't want to pay for the extra expense. But guess what, that's not why the vita failed. The vita failed because the market for it doesn't exist. Well, practically, anyway. The market for it has been consumed by other products, and there's not enough audience to garner any attention. Even at launch, no one gave a shit.

Seriously, memory cards would be a problem to overcome if you have consumer interest in the first place. That never happened. I assume that Sony never really dropped the card pricing because it at least still makes money, so they aren't hemorrhaging money. No one cares about the system. It's ignored on our shelves.

And I love my vita. I do. But the stuff people say Sony should have done would all have been idiotic business moves. None of them would have made any difference. The vita was doomed from launch. Which sucks, but it's true

What market are you referring to though? Casual handheld market? Cause 3DS fought tooth and nail and managed to do just fine despite cell phones.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

The cost of memory cards was a real barrier to entry and the rear touchpad was frustrating. I only got my Assassin's Creed white OLED bundle when it came out because I was a college student with nothing else to spend my money on.

Underperforming sales meant less investment from Sony and third parties in AAA games, so we only got a handful that lived up to the promise of a PS3 on the go. Of those handful only a fraction were good. We got hot shit like COD Black Ops Declassified, that Resistance game, and the Assassin's Creed game while the only two original AAA games that I can remember being good were Uncharted (despite the forced touch) and Killzone. We got a few ports that were good too like Injustice.

Add that to the fact you can't fucking play Crash Bandicoot and a lot of other PS1 Classics on the Vita in the US and the dearth of shovelware indies that popped up once the mainstream publishers left and you've got a system that was shot in the knee and left to die.


Now, that said I absolutely loved Killzone Mercenary, Uncharted, and Injustice on the Vita during the first year and a half I owned it. From then until early this year I barely touched it. Then I got Shovel Knight and played the whole thing on the Vita and I am looking forward to getting Axiom Verge soon too.

I don't give a shit about Japanese games and I hate touched based games and a lot of indies are mediocre. But if we keep getting faithful throwbacks like Shovel Knight and Axiom Verge I'll keep buying games for my Vita.

 

[Trigonometrize.]

Look, everyone regurgitating the memory card line really doesn't get it. It sucks for those of you who have mild interest in the system but don't want to pay for the extra expense. But guess what, that's not why the vita failed. The vita failed because the market for it doesn't exist. Well, practically, anyway. The market for it has been consumed by other products, and there's not enough audience to garner any attention. Even at launch, no one gave a shit.

Seriously, memory cards would be a problem to overcome if you have consumer interest in the first place. That never happened. I assume that Sony never really dropped the card pricing because it at least still makes money, so they aren't hemorrhaging money. No one cares about the system. It's ignored on our shelves.

And I love my vita. I do. But the stuff people say Sony should have done would all have been idiotic business moves. None of them would have made any difference. The vita was doomed from launch. Which sucks, but it's true

I agree with everything here. The Vita's memory card prices are really f'ing bad, but your point that if the market for the Vita existed the memory card pricing would been overcome is on point.

What market are you referring to though? Casual handheld market? Cause 3DS fought tooth and nail and managed to do just fine despite cell phones.

3DS also sold roughly 1/3 of its predecessor when releasing exactly when smartphones had matured. It's sold less than PSP. If you combined PSP and DS vs. Vita and 3DS, the drop is over a hundred million. Nintendo's portable NX (if it exists) will fare just as poorly, if not more I will bet you. The market for dedicated handhelds is absolutely shrinking.

 

[MatrixMan.EXE]

Unfortunately it was just a product that no one really asked for. Very much the embodiment of a market that barely even exists anymore.

Shame too because it's such a glorious device. But, it happens.

Edit: The memory card bullshit needs to stop. 4 years on and it's just as false as it was in 2012. Good memory prices wouldn't have saved Vita.

 

[zoukka]

Vita made the exact same mistake as PSP did. They tried to bring home console-like experiences for a handheld. It's a doomed strategy.

 

[ksdixon]

No l2, r2, ls, rs.

 

[Fuchsdh]

One hundred percent fucking yes. It would at least have been palatable if they gave the base system 16GB+.

Asking people to pay like 3x or more of the price of an equivalent micro SD/ regular SD card with no technological benefits is fucking insane.

What's baffling is that the Vita came after Sony had largely decided to abandon MemoryStick. They seemed to learn their mistakes about having proprietary storage... and then made another proprietary storage format that was far and away more expensive than MemoryStick was.

 

[mjc]

Too expensive, too few big hitter games, rise of mobile gaming.

 

[LostDonkey]

Because Gran Turismo never released for it.

 

[Aesnath]

I know that I was always mildly interested in it (I had a PSP), but it just never had a piece of software that I was sure I needed to own. Sure, it had a few games I wanted to try, but that wasn't enough to justify the price. It needed something must-have, and it never got it.

 

[outunderthestars]

What market are you referring to though? Casual handheld market? Cause 3DS fought tooth and nail and managed to do just fine despite cell phones.

I wouldn't call the 3DS "just fine" anywhere but Japan.

 

[ChronotriggerJM]

What market are you referring to though? Casual handheld market? Cause 3DS fought tooth and nail and managed to do just fine despite cell phones.

Fine is the choice word however. The sales are massively down from its predecessor, and if you factor in Vita's performance from the PSP, the market is pretty bleak.

 

[DrROBschiz]

Look, everyone regurgitating the memory card line really doesn't get it. It sucks for those of you who have mild interest in the system but don't want to pay for the extra expense. But guess what, that's not why the vita failed. The vita failed because the market for it doesn't exist. Well, practically, anyway. The market for it has been consumed by other products, and there's not enough audience to garner any attention. Even at launch, no one gave a shit.

Seriously, memory cards would be a problem to overcome if you have consumer interest in the first place. That never happened. I assume that Sony never really dropped the card pricing because it at least still makes money, so they aren't hemorrhaging money. No one cares about the system. It's ignored on our shelves.

And I love my vita. I do. But the stuff people say Sony should have done would all have been idiotic business moves. None of them would have made any difference. The vita was doomed from launch. Which sucks, but it's true

Except the one positive aspect of the system since launch was software volume and purchases

You created a setup that directly got in the way of people purchasing digital games... the main draw of the damn system

Maybe it wouldnt have been super successful like you say but it wouldnt be the trainwreck that it became

 

[Syntsui]

They fucked up with those cards.

 

[outunderthestars]

Vita made the exact same mistake as PSP did. They tried to bring home console-like experiences for a handheld. It's a doomed strategy.

This is faulty logic when the most of the best selling 3DS games are console styled games or ports of console games.....

 

[the-pi-guy]

Combination of these factors:

-Competition with smartphones
-Expensive
-poorly supported
--The support it did have was not mass market
-Expensive memory cards


All those factors and probably a few more, basically meant there was little reason to have one and plenty of reason not to have one.

 

[dLMN8R]

I'm a perfect customer for the device but never bought one because of their fucking ridiculous storage prices.

 

[PseudoViper]

I love the vita, but there's just too much competition between cellular phones and Nintendo for it to survive.

I also think the vita died because of its stupid proprietary memory cards. Not only was space small, but the price was high as fuk. For me that was a deal breaker.

 

[Pinkuss]

A rough guess:

• Nintendo are the king of the handheld.
• (much more importantly from a personal perspective); Memory cards. I have a Vita TV that I acquired for free. I've yet to use it though despite wanting to play Persona 4 because I can't justify the memory card price (I'm far from poor but memory isn't worth that much.. we're not in the PS1/2 days...). These days memory is generally pretty cheap, Sony going against this was silly.

 

[Deleted member 752119]

Memory card price and size, and remote play is pretty bad on it. A lot of people would have picked it up just for a remote play device. But now I can use my Macbook.

I doubt that would have had a huge impact, especially in the US. People want to play console games on their big tvs, not on a tiny portable screen.

 

[Akoi]

Sony dropped it too quickly, Nintendo on the other hand didn't give up and lowered their prices and adopted after initial failure. Sony just said screw this and left it to die and never really lowered their prices for it.(especially the memory cards)

Smartphones can be to blame, that's for sure. But for me I still love my Vita and 64GB memory card even though Sony doesn't. And nothing beats playing a game with physical buttons and on a system made for gaming.

 

[DrROBschiz]

What people dont understand was that there was indeed a decent market for the system in both Japan and the US but they failed on all fronts to be consumer friendly

Maybe if they had more faith in digital sales by volume (ya know.. the model that Apple, Google, Amazon and Steam thrive off of?) they wouldnt have made the idiot decision to make those memory cards

 

[Sakura]

Fine is the choice word however. The sales are massively down from its predecessor, and if you factor in Vita's performance from the PSP, the market is pretty bleak.

I don't think the market is that bleak if Nintendo is the only one making dedicated gaming handhelds in it.
Sure sales are way down from the DS. But the thing has still shipped close to 60 million. That's more than the SNES, N64, Gamecube, Wii U, and close to the amount the NES shipped. That's still a healthy enough market they can continue to make games for. It's just not really big enough for other players like Sony.

 

[Trigonometrize.]

What people dont understand was that there was indeed a decent market for the system in both Japan and the US but they failed on all fronts to be consumer friendly

Maybe if they had more faith in digital sales by volume (ya know.. the model that Apple, Google, Amazon and Steam thrive off of?) they wouldnt have made the idiot decision to make those memory cards

Why do you believe there is a decent market for the system in the US?

 

[……forgetit]

A huge amount of reasons. Smartphone ate a large amount of the portable gaming market, a lot of it's big third party games went elsewhere, the memory cards were a hidden tax for owning one and Nintendo realsed a console capable of 3D games finally, many if which looked "good enough." Really it would have been more surprising if it was successful with all the things going against it.

 

[Petrae]

(Relative) Hardware price, exorbitant memory card costs, poor marketing, weak AAA support, and the mobile boom all factored into dooming the Vita to its fate.

Nintendo severely cutting the price of the 3DS mere hours after the Vita was unveiled in 2011 quickly changed the perception of the hardware from "Wow, cool!" to "Wow, that's expensive!"

Memory card pricing remains a sore spot to this day for Vita, especially with its digital/indie focus. Paying a king's ransom for a memory card in order to play the games you want doesn't make the Vita at all attractive... and the fact that you needed a memory card to even play games when Vita first came out added expense to the purchase, versus Nintendo including an SD card with 3DS units.

Vita was marketed poorly. There was no buzz, no organized campaign, no effort from Sony to get consumers to buy in. The Vita was very much a "Here you go, if you want it" platform... and, surprise, next to nobody wanted it. Marketing isn't the only thing, but it's still an important piece out of the gate. See also: WiiU's failure, and consumer confusion for months about what the heck WiiU is.

Indie champions can tout Vita as a platform for them-- but any platform that doesn't bring a significant AAA software presence is going to be ignored by the mainstream. Sony couldn't even get its own major dev teams to bother with Vita, outsourcing major IPs to lesser devs... with predictable results. Call of Duty was awful, AssCreed was just kind of there, Madden and FIFA impressed nobody, and then AAA was done with Vita.

Finally, the mass migration from dedicated handhelds to mobile hurt both the Vita and the 3DS (which plunged more than 61% versus the DS in terms of unit sales). It's a much tougher sell for handhelds now that it was in the DS/PSP generation. Phones and tablets are catching up in terms of horsepower, and a new generation of players doesn't seem to care much about buttons and sticks not being used for controls.

Vita was doomed almost from the start-- but, like any car crash, you know what's going to happen and yet you can't look away. Watching the Vita stumble and bumble its way through the last 4 years has been something else.

 

[Toadthemushroom]

This David Jenkins piece, written after the Vita's (then NGP) unveiling in early 2011, answers the question pretty well.

But as impressive as it is to see Uncharted running on a portable console the truth is none of Sony’s first party games have ever had the sales or cultural impact that would imply they were such a necessity for the PSP2. Uncharted certainly deserves to be more popular than it is but after two tries already it seems unlikely it ever will be. Likewise Resistance, LittleBigPlanet, Everybody’s Golf and wipEout are well known amongst the hardcore – but not necessarily by anyone else.

As well as showing off just how powerful the PSP2 is this line-up, which also included a tech demo for Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 4, also suggests that Sony’s portable is still primarily interested in replicating the home video game experience on a portable. And we’ve no idea why.

The success of the Nintendo DS and iPhone is all due to them offering gaming experiences that are not only appreciably different from those you’d see on a home console but also specifically designed with portable play in mind (i.e. not too complicated and playable in short bursts). The PSP has never offered this and that is at the root of its failure in the West.

In Japan the overwhelming popularity of Monster Hunter means that the PSP is viewed very differently there. But Monster Hunter Freedom’s success is based on its portability and the way it encourages social interaction – unfortunately for Sony and Capcom it does so in a uniquely Japanese way which has never translated overseas.

The Japanese success is also due to the console’s low development costs, which allows local developers to continue to make games purely for a home audience – just as they did in the PlayStation 2 era. It’s hard to imagine how the PSP2 is going to continue this legacy though, since making games that look almost as good as the PlayStation 3 mean spending almost the same amount of money.

And this in a market where, thanks to Apple, the average cost of a portable video game is plummeting. There’s a good chance that when Sony (and Nintendo) try to continue to sell their games for £30 a throw they’ll have a very rude awakening. Increasingly many customers are used to paying 10 times less for games that, while rarely comparable in quality or longevity, still fill a quick five minutes with an equal amount of fun.

With the benefit of hindsight both Vita and 3DS would have been better prepared to launch in a rapidly changing marketplace. Vita in particular launched before Sony even considered lowering their barriers to entry for self publishing, let alone those for independent developers, and the philosophy behind the handheld was, as mentioned in that piece, worryingly similar to the PSP.

Only by that point the market for these games started moving elsewhere after 3DS did worse than expected and publishers shifted tact, and 3DS itself retained the key support from the biggest publishers and IPs (Atlus, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Level-5, Square Enix heavily supported the system) in addition to retaining the strength (and value) of Nintendo IP. Heck, this just made me realise that 3DS did surprisingly well given the hardware was designed in a complete vacuum from what was going on with smartphones at the time, and it basically carried the "3D" branding throughout its lifetime.

 

[FantasticMrFoxdie]

Surprised it took a while for people to say Smartphones.

Thats the biggest reason. Not memory cards lol

 

[Deleted member 752119]

This is faulty logic when the most of the best selling 3DS games are console styled games or ports of console games.....

Nintendo's cartoony art styles don't lose nearly as much on the small screen as big spectacle games like Uncharted or Killzone where experiencing the graphics and surround sound is a huge part of the experience.

 

[redcrayon]

When Nintendo puts its first-party games on a new portable, they don't just farm it out to the b-teams, they also make mainline entries like MK7. Sure, they also knock out quick filler entries too, but the portables are continually given equal billing even outside of Japan - you don't feel that it's an afterthought.

Golden Abyss was a pisspoor imitation of what made Uncharted great on PS3, and it's pretty obvious that Sony's best devs dont give a crap about working on portables. Which is fair enough when they want to work on cutting edge home consoles instead but severely undermined the Vita project when Sony themselves needed to prove the concept, rather than rely on third parties to sell their own device.

Outside of Sony offering its best teams to make at least one killer project each for their new platform in an effort to build faith in major western third parties to join in and build an audience too (at which point Sony teams could return to home consoles), I'm not sure what they could have done when it was obvious that even they didn't believe in it.

 

[Bigboss242]

They refused to take a loss on there memory cards and over charged for them. 10 gb used to be crazy expensive. Not sure how it is now probably still messed up. Then they turned there back on the system after killzone threw up there hands and said this is all you get.. bye.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

There's no point in listing the system's cost & the cost of the memory cards as separate problems because they're just one part of the same problem - the system was too expensive for what it was offering to achieve mass market success. Sony used the price of the memory cards to partially subsidize the cost of the system itself - if the system had used generic memory cards, they would have just made the system more expensive to compensate.

 

[DrROBschiz]

Why do you believe there is a decent market for the system in the US?

Software attach rate of the current base

I believe they could have pushed numbers far higher than they did if they had thought the things through

 

[ChronotriggerJM]

I don't think the market is that bleak if Nintendo is the only one making dedicated gaming handhelds in it.
Sure sales are way down from the DS. But the thing has still shipped close to 60 million. That's more than the SNES, N64, Gamecube, Wii U, and close to the amount the NES shipped. That's still a healthy enough market they can continue to make games for. It's just not really big enough for other players like Sony.

Totally fair point. If their next platform sees similar performance, it would be sustainable. If it declines by similar margins however, it's troubling. We're well past market saturation now regarding smartphones and tablets, so we'll have to see how the market reacts.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

-it came out during the start of the smart device boom
-while the base price was good considering the hardware, the memory prices caused the true price of the system to balloon to level that most people don't want to spend on a dedicated handheld
-Sony's marketing was absolutely abysmal
-it lost Monster Hunter to its direct competitor
-Sony basically threw their hands up and stopped trying completely after a year or two

 

[RibMan]

It's Saturday night. You and your wife of three months and two weeks are home. Both of you are comfortably seated in the living room, staring directly at a glorious 87" 4KTV (advertised as 90", but we know the real deal) that you received as a wedding gift from her brother. Your beautiful wife turns her head and looks at you and says "Honey, let's watch a movie. I'm thinking something with a little action and a twist". You say "Sugar plum, you read my mind.". Then you pull out your iPhone 5 to watch an action movie.

The reason the Vita died is the same reason people with nice TV's don't sit in their living room and watch movies on their phones. The Vita was Sony doubling down on their (somewhat noble) belief that portable games should be like console games. The only problem is Sony also makes a console called the PS4, and the majority of people would rather play Uncharted/Ratchet/Infamous/The Witness/MLB/Bloodborne on console than on a portable device. Nevermind the poor battery life, the poorly managed OS, the lack of third-party support, and overpriced memory cards. People would rather have "the real deal" than "the somewhat real deal".

What made matters worse for the Vita is that the smartphone became the most efficient way to play videogames on the go. We now live in an age where the smartphone in your pocket can do 5 key things: communicate with people across the world, browse the internet with ease, run productivity and social software, take hi-res pictures and videos, and play videogames and other media. If we're being generous, the Vita was capable of doing two of the five -- browse the internet, and play videogames and other media. The average consumer will not pick a dedicated gaming handheld over a mobile phone. Those days are long gone. This is the case across the world. Yes, there are regions like Japan where dedicated handhelds have a little life left in them due to the lifestyle(s) of the people in the region. However, if your 100 million + product can only find success in one region, you're done.

With that in mind, you can begin to understand why the Vita was doomed from the get-go, and why Sony are probably never going to make a Vita 2. Spec-wise, the Vita was objectively better than any other device at the time. However, powerful specs alone won't win you a market. In the future, I think Sony's portable strategy will be 100% tied into remote play. They will do exactly what they wanted to accomplish with the original PSP: play console games on the go.

 

[AgeEighty]

1. It really had no market for what it was. They touted it as console games like Uncharted and Killzone. People want to play those games on their big screens. Especially in the west. A lot of portable gamers are drawn to handhelds as they don't care for the console AAA scene and like that portables have more old school types of games.

The strange thing to me is that Sony had already tried the AAA-quality-games-on-portables model with the PSP, and didn't do well with it there, either. It was all the later quirky, pick-up-and-play games that were successful on PSP.

And now people seem excited about the prospect of Nintendo doing something similar with NX: having a unified platform. I don't get it.

Gaming at home and gaming on the go lend themselves to very different experiences, and the sales bear that out repeatedly.

 

[MuchoMalo]

Because Sony is to handhelds as Nintendo is to consoles, except that they're better at marketing and far, far worse at support. Nintendo and Sony joining forces would instantly result in a gaming monopoly, since each covers the other's shortcomings perfectly.

 

[redcrayon]

Totally fair point. If their next platform sees similar performance, it would be sustainable. If it declines by similar margins however, it's troubling. We're well past market saturation now regarding smartphones and tablets, so we'll have to see how the market reacts.

Agreed. I'd also add that it's 60m consoles sold where games sell for £30-£40 a go and development cost is orders of magnitude cheaper than on home consoles too.