Playstation Vita has to be the worst selling console over. Playstation Vita and having a snail race on how can get to the finish line. What could had Sony had done to make Vita a success? They made a single mistake which caused them to flunk an entire handheld.

The Playstation Vita was far too expensive. The Play Station Vita was priced at 250$. The memory cards are also too expensive. A person is maybe looking to spend 300$ that's not even including tax or any free games! The 3ds was also seen as a failure half a year it came out. Nintendo had to lower down the price for the 3ds. The 3ds became a hit. It's quite clear that the Vita was way too expensive.

Here's an alternative scenario Sony could had done.

PlayStation Vita will be coming out for December 11,2015 for the price of 170$. The PlayStation Vita has Wii level graphics. The PlayStation Vita memory card will be cheap and affordable. The handheld will come out with games from various genres. The upcoming launch games will include

>Counter-Strike source

>Call of Duty

>Rayman Origins

>Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen

>Plants vs. Zombies

The excepted sales units will be 30 million units during its life time. The target market will be teen and early thirty males. The expected lifespan will be five years.

The only reason why Sony made the Vita so expensive is because they wanted a quality level console for the handheld. It appears Sony doesn't understand handhelds at all. People play the handheld to have the handheld experience. Handhelds don't need to be as well as the console though they will eventually get there after years.

Vita meet it's demise by not having a cheap hardware. Vita failed because Sony doesn't understand handheld.

A) Vita is FAR from the worst selling console of all time. The Pippin exists. The Virtual Boy exists. The PCFX exists.

B) It is odd to say that "Sony doesn't understand handheld" when the PSP was one of the most popular and successful handhelds either. Sony doesn't understand handhelds as well as the king, Nintendo, but no other company has matched the success of the PSP.

C) Maybe the Vita should have been cheaper and less powerful. I do think the memory card costs were a big mistake. But what drove the failure of the Vita wasn't necessarily the launch price (the much less powerful 3DS also launched at $250, though Nintendo did cut the price quickly) but the rise of phone games AND the cost for developing for a 'console level' handheld. It's just much cheaper and easier to make a phone game, with the potential for huge profit, than it is to make a game for the Vita or even the 3DS. Nintendo kept the 3DS alive with first party software (and some good 3rd party stuff, but mostly first party) and Sony tried that, but found that Uncharted and Killzone just don't translate to handheld like Mario, Donkey Kong, and Fire Emblem.

I like the Vita a bunch. It's my favorite handheld ever. But it was the right system at the wrong time. I don't think we will ever see a dedicated handheld from anyone but Nintendo again. The smartphone is just too powerful. If there's ever another PSP it will be a phone with gaming features (which has also been tried and failed) not a separate handheld console.

I don't think you even have to go that obscure or outright terrible. The Vita has almost certainly sold more than the Saturn, Dreamcast, and Game Gear, which were all under 10 million. Sony hasn't said much about Vita sales in years, but they were around 10 million in July 2014.

As for the OP's idea, I think launching a handheld in 2015 would have been an even bigger disaster. In early 2012 the Vita still had games that phones couldn't match. In 2015, any flagship phone would blow a Wii-level handheld out of the water. Selling something for $170 would mean it would have a bad screen, a cheap SOC, or some other major compromise. The Vita and 3DS are both hopelessly behind phones and tablets in terms of power. I know there are some people who hate phone games, but not nearly enough to support a platform. I'm not even convinced Nintendo can get away with another dedicated handheld.

The Vita is a way better handheld than the 3DS and it's not even close. Yes the memory cards are expensive, near isn't comprehensible, and rear touch is dumb, but everything else is amazing. It's an handheld that has great games still being released consistently. 3DS has like 5 or 6 great games and then what? When was the last time it was even worth turning on a 3DS before Fire Emblem?

A vita that took sd cards would be wonderful, seeing as my 32gb card is full (yes there were that many vita/psp games i wanted). I think it's more sony's fault for not marketing it well enough, and for not really having a killer app for it ala monster hunter. Overall it's a damn fine system and probably my favorite portable gaming device behind the 3ds.

While the proprietary memory hurt it a lot, at the end of the day I just don't think there's that big of a market for a relatively high end dedicated handheld. Which sucks cause the Vita is awesome, it's kind of what I've always wanted out of a portable system, but I don't think most people care in a world of smartphones. Nintendo handhelds won't entirely go away as long as Pokemon and Monster Hunter remain popular, but I imagine that market will continue to shrink with their next system too.

@hunkulese: What? Other than Tearaway and Persona 4 Golden (a PS2 game) what is there? And what's still coming out? As someone who owns both the 3DS has gotten a ridiculous amount more play from me. I bought my Vita with hopes for it but it became my portable Persona/PS1 RPG system and even that's not enough to keep me playing much. 90% of the indie titles for it can be played on PS4 or PC as well.

Off the top of my head some great 3DS games (I'm not even going to put the remakes which have been very well done) would be: Link Between Worlds, Pokemon X/Y, Super Mario 3D Land, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Bravely Default, The Fire Emblem games, Pushmo, Crashmo, Boxboy, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, MH4U, Mario Kart 7 and arguments could be made for SMTIV, Persona Q, Professor Layton games, Phoenix Wright games, the Mario & Luigi games, Kirby Triple Deluxe and Fantasy Life.

As to what Sony did wrong, I think it's lack of first party support and just not getting that handheld games need to be different than console games. I'm not interested in playing Assassin's Creed or Uncharted on the go. There are a few really good games but it seems they didn't learn what people want to play on a small screen.

While I agree that both the PSP and Vita are great devices the PSP sold well because of it's versatility and ability to be jailbroken for lack of a better term. The PSP was the first of it's kind and cheap. When it was released everyone didn't have an iphone in their pockets and the PSP could basically do everything that a first gen Iphone could do. You could play music, movies, games all on the go just like an Ipod. And don't forget the "hacking scene". Those devices were so easy to break into and steal whatever type of media you wanted (how easy you ask? so easy a caveman could do it). Cheap sells and the PSP was a cheap entry point into the Ipod/Iphone movement with free music and games.

@sodapop7: Vita has a bunch of great Vita only games like Danganrompa or Freedom Wars, but what really puts it ahead is all the amazing ports that it has. Pretty much every indy game worth playing is on vita and is usually a better experience on Vita since they tend to be smaller games with less focus on spectacle. Hotline Miami, Rogue Legacy, Spelunky, Binding of Issac, Shovel Knight, and Dragon's Crown just scratches the surface of amazing ports that are better on Vita and are perfect handheld games.

@ericjasonwade:

The PSP did get hacked but it also had an amazing software library. Seriously, it's pretty insane. That shows that there were some game sales going on, and in Japan the thing was ubiquitous (and my understanding is it was not hacked as frequently over there.) The PSP's unparalleled software library shows that it was enough of a success to draw a lot of developers, hacking aside.

These games are great on Vita, and I agree that having a deep library of great indie games (and let's not forget PS1 and PSP classics) is what makes the Vita great moreso than Uncharted: Golden Abyss, but how are they "better" on Vita? They're just more portable, right? Personally I still prefer the games on PS4 because the Vita analog sticks are not as good, but of course it's fantastic to be able to play Hotline Miami (or Parasite Eve. Or Adventure Island) on the train.

Wait, have you used the Vita's analog sticks? You'd have to be nuts to want to play Counter Strike with those things!

Sony released a really cool handheld and had no clue what to do with it. The story of the Vita's failure pretty much begins and ends there.

I feel like this discussion is a couple years late. The Vita is already being sold for under $170 now (on Amazon US, at least).

The 3DS isn't going to beat the PSP, and Nintendo's excuse for the lack of games?

3DS and Wii U Third-Party Support is Much Worse Than You Think - Oct 2014.

@hunkulese: As far as I remember, the only game you mentioned that is only on Vita is Freedom Wars. My point was that there are very few games I NEED a Vita to play and that's why it is a failure. And nearly every port I've played on the Vita (Spelunky, Rogue Legacy, Shovel Knight, etc.) has felt worse. I have a hard time believing you'd rather use those controls than a DS4. Portability is fine, but if that's all that it has going for it, the system isn't going to succeed. You need unique experiences.

the real problem is that the memory cards cost half the price of the console itself I just bought a vita and i love it but I understand completely why it didn't sell well

Why would it launch in 2015 with a game from 2004!?

I mean Nintendo did something similar for their handhelds with Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, but those are loved Nintendo games that you needed an older console to play.

And I'm not sure they would have sold tons and tons more with a price cut. They really needed a way to make that system more compelling so that people were happy to spend the asking price. So I think it was a lack of quality software, or a lack of advertising the quality software that the Vita did have. They could have also made more of it being a companion device to the PS4.

I am still interested in getting one to be honest.

I disagree with the OP on a few things. But other than how expensive the memory cards are, though I see it as a vindictive but rational response to piracy on PSP, I can't come up with a scenario where the Vita could have made DS sales numbers with Nintendo being the most ubiquitous bring among handhelds. The way I see it; some things just don't catch on, and the Vita is just one of those things.

Vita found a cool little niche as an indie-on-the-go handheld. Unlike phone ports, I liked how the games felt on the hardware, and at one time it was by far my most-played current system.

It eventually just became a Spelunky machine for me, but I was/am very happy with the Vita. They could've done a lot differently to be a sales success but I'm glad Sony made the choices they did with it. Well, aside from the expensive-ass memory upgrade.

Setting the expectation of "console quality on the go" doomed this thing from the get-go. That FFT-style Bioshock game is the type of thing that the system needed. Franchises you know but experiences tailor-made for the device, not trying to cram PS3 games onto the system (even if it resulted in some great games like Uncharted and Killzone).

It kills me that they haven't at least dropped the memory card prices.

I mistyped that. I meant 2011 instead of 2015.

What? Handheld experience with FPS games? The only decent FPS shooter on the Vita was Killzone Mercenary - which was good but in a sort of "this is good for a handheld way". Something like CoD or CSS would be terrible on the Vita. In fact, there was a terrible COD with Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified.

The Vita is a solid device and was priced reasonably, but the memory cards cost too much in a world where SD card prices where plummeting. While lots of people say "but those indie games are everywhere", it's the best indie machine on the market. It's screen and sound quality make it the best place to play things like Hotline Miami, Spelunky and Rogue Legacy. The memory cards put people off and it just never recovered.

@paulmako there's enough on the Vita to make it worth it and while Sony aren't beating the drum - except for Gio Corsi -there are plenty of games still steadily being released on it.

If those games were poorly made, it's because the game makers made them bad. It's not the Vita's fault.

I don't know, when you open up the vita's library to games also available on ps4/ps3 the library kind of becomes amazing. Specifically there are two types of games the vita excels at, portable fighting games (good to great versions of mortal kombat 9, UMVC3, street fighter v tekken, divekick, skullgirls) and ports of ps3/ps4 indie games. Imagine if someone didn't have access to a ps3 or ps4, getting a vita gives them the ability to play an amaaazing array of indie masterpieces: Rogue Legacy, crypt of the necrodancer, nucleur throne, spelunky, olli olli, hotline miami, sound shapes, axiom verge. These games alone rival the library of any handheld I can think of (other than perhaps phones and the gba).

With all that in mind maybe Sony should have marketed the Vita as a fighting game/indie darling machine?

@jdizzlefoshizzle: it would be weird to market a handheld as a fighting game machine. Most people want to play fighting games against other peopld, which you can do online with the Vita but if you're in a place with a strong stable Internet connection why not just play on a console?

Buying a handheld for fighting games is pretty niche.

What is very weird with the Vita is that Sony didn't really develop exclusives for genres that do work well on handheld for it. The PSP got all kinds of God of War, Ratchet and Clank and Daxter games. The Vita got a few FPS (not a good match for the tiny sticks and limited FOV) and...that was pretty much it for big first party. There was also Uncharted but that was also a bad fit because Uncharted is about big wow factor set pieces that don't work as well on a tiny screen.

Tearaway was great, but too unusual to catch on. Gravity Rush, Soul Sacrifice, Oreshika, and Freedom Wars are good games but not outstanding enough to be system sellers. Outside of modern Naughty Dog, Sony first party stuff has never been big sellers, their systems have always been platforms for third parties.