RIP PSVita. Vita will be laid to rest in 2019.

https://gematsu.com/2018/09/ps-vita-...-2019-in-japan

https://i.imgur.com/4wAN8OI.gif
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WChTqYlDjtI


Sony to end production of PSVita in 2019.

Easily one of my fave handhelds ever. This also marks the official end for Sony handhelds that IMO until the Switch, Sony did better. Vita meant life and Vita will be the Dreamcast of handhelds and continue to live in our gamer hearts. Godspeed PlayStation Vita and PlayStation handhelds. I even have and love The PocketStation. 1999-2019 of Sony Handhelds.

I never owned the Vita, but was always curious about how it was. Why did it not do as well? Bad marketing, expensive proprietary storage cards, shortage of killer apps?

I had the PSP in middle school and it absolutely blew my mind at the time with all the functionality it packed.

For how much I loved the PSP, somehow I never payed attention to the Vita. It seemed interesting, but I never felt the need to buy one and never followed any its game releases. It seems like a great handled though, and I'm sure most of the people that bought one loved it.

High price. Bad marketing. Sony gave up on it early. Then yes the Memory cards were the number 1 killer.

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Originally Posted by ComradeOj

I never owned the Vita, but was always curious about how it was. Why did it not do as well? Bad marketing, expensive proprietary storage cards, shortage of killer apps?

I had the PSP in middle school and it absolutely blew my mind at the time with all the functionality it packed.

For how much I loved the PSP, somehow I never payed attention to the Vita. It seemed interesting, but I never felt the need to buy one and never followed any its game releases. It seems like a great handled though, and I'm sure most of the people that bought one loved it.

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Number one problem was that third-party software support wasn't good enough to carry the system.
PSV was designed as a PSP successor but released in market very different from 2004/2005, third-party publishers already began the current strategy of only supporting home consoles/PC with a small number of AAA games that are assured to bring big profits while releasing smaller budget games on smartphones (those smaller budget were a generation prior dedicated to handheld games).
All it remained for PSV was the support of niche japanese games but of course such software could not sell the console in US or Europe in meaningful quantities (for example of the major consoles only Saturn sold less than PSV in US).
In Japan PSV was moderately succesfull but it sold less than 1/3 what PSP did.
A Sony console without strong third-party support cannot succeed so Sony after about 2 years stopped caring for PSV and reallocated the resources to other projects (PS4 and PSVR).

1. Why do I keep hearing news about the Vita dying? It's like Deja Vu or something...

2. As much as I absolutely love the Vita and PSTV, I much prefer the 3DS. To say Sony did better based on graphics alone is like a PC Master Racist saying PC is better than consoles. Completely moot point. Gameplay and ease of use is what matters in my book.

I found the PSP (original model) so uncomfortable to play. It was the first time a portable with great games made me not want to play it. The Vita made me revisit and enjoy its library. It's a shame Sony screwed up the marketing so badly resulting in so few high budget exclusives. For classic re-releases and modern indie games, the Vita is excellent.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ComradeOj

I never owned the Vita, but was always curious about how it was. Why did it not do as well? Bad marketing, expensive proprietary storage cards, shortage of killer apps?

I had the PSP in middle school and it absolutely blew my mind at the time with all the functionality it packed.

For how much I loved the PSP, somehow I never payed attention to the Vita. It seemed interesting, but I never felt the need to buy one and never followed any its game releases. It seems like a great handled though, and I'm sure most of the people that bought one loved it.

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First of all: when is the last time anybody stood a serious chance against Nintendo in the handheld market? (the closest real competition before Sony was Sega with the Game Gear)

And then: PSP had both awful battery life (discs were a bad idea) but more importantly it got hacked wide open pretty quickly and publishers fled as soon as that happened. PSPGo with its inability to play the original discs and requiring you to download the games by purchasing them again didn't help matters at all. When the Vita came in the damage had already been done and it didn't really stand much of a chance (expensive memory cards were a sticky point too, but I'm not sure this was a decisive factor).

For some reason Vita became home to developers of niche games in Japan, which is why it stood some chance over there… and then whenever the games would be announced for localization I'd keep people seeing "don't make me buy a Vita just for this!" (after many games of saying exactly the same shit). Gotta love the defeatist attitude right from the get go. And now that the Switch came out everybody jumped ship altogether, so the Vita is pretty much dead by this point even in Japan.

At least that's the impression I get.

Sad. Still use and love my Vita. But it goes to show that even SONY found it hard to support more than 1 system at a time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sik

First of all: when is the last time anybody stood a serious chance against Nintendo in the handheld market? (the closest real competition before Sony was Sega with the Game Gear)

And then: PSP had both awful battery life (discs were a bad idea) but more importantly it got hacked wide open pretty quickly and publishers fled as soon as that happened. PSPGo with its inability to play the original discs and requiring you to download the games by purchasing them again didn't help matters at all. When the Vita came in the damage had already been done and it didn't really stand much of a chance (expensive memory cards were a sticky point too, but I'm not sure this was a decisive factor).

For some reason Vita became home to developers of niche games in Japan, which is why it stood some chance over there… and then whenever the games would be announced for localization I'd keep people seeing "don't make me buy a Vita just for this!" (after many games of saying exactly the same shit). Gotta love the defeatist attitude right from the get go. And now that the Switch came out everybody jumped ship altogether, so the Vita is pretty much dead by this point even in Japan.

At least that's the impression I get.

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PSP sold 80 million units. Sony was the only to ever make it somewhat a compeition. SEGA didn't even make a dent on Game Boy sales.

The PSP to me was just so much better overall. I liked the Vita but the PSP's success just made it overall better.

I really like having both a Vita and a PSTV. I just wish the game support on the PSTV wasn't such a pain to deal with...it'll get easier as the years go on, though, I imagine.

The PSTV could have been a huge hit if Sony had pushed it as a Roku with actual worthwhile game support. Not having Netflix among others is a killer and especially stupid considering the Vita had a working Netflix app. Too bad legit game support for PSP and Vita games isn't as good as it should be, but even then it's a fantastic "console."

PS Vita is only just now dead? I thought it had been retired long ago.

Don’t really care about the Vita... 3DS is a better system overall and Sony proved with the PSP that they can build a handheld system, but they have no idea to keep it alive.

But hey, if I could get one cheap, I would. I was interested in that Monster Hunter rip-off Inafune made.

As we are reminiscing about the Vita, my initial reaction is to laugh uncontrollably thanks to the predictions of those who loudly proclaimed the Vita as Sony's way of finally dethroning, Nintendo, the king of handhelds. The thing had promise but Sony fumbled.