Shuhei Yoshida on the PS Vita’s Flop: Sony’s former head of PlayStation, Shuhei Yoshida, has offered insights into why the PS Vita did not succeed as well as its predecessor.
Main Reasons for Failure
According to Yoshida, a key factor was the split development resources. Development teams were allocated between the PS4 and Vita, leading Sony to prioritize the more popular home console system:
Development resources were split and they didn’t have enough studios to make games for 2 platforms, so they had to prioritize PS4 development.
Other Contributing Issues
Proprietary Memory Cards
Propriety memory cards were a significant downfall, as consumers had to spend more money for additional storage. Yoshida acknowledges this was a mistake:
That was a mistake. People have to spend more money to get the memory card.
Design Choices
The rear touch panel and OLED display, which seemed promising during prototypes, were ultimately deemed unnecessary or too costly. Removing TV-out functionality from the final consumer model also contributed to poor sales.
In the development hardware for Vita, it had a video out so a developer can connect to screen and develop games on and somehow, the team decided to take that feature out from the consumer unit to save a few cents.
Have you owned a Vita? Do you think the platform was worthy of greater resource allocation from Sony?
Still own it, finally modded it a few months back. It’s a shame Sony screwed the pooch on it, it’s a fantastic handheld.