Talk about misinterpretation. How would reduced hardware specs make it compete directly with smartphones and tablets? The executives increased the Vita's capabilities specifically to address the aforementioned phones and tablets. Sony should have ignored this segment of the market and made the Vita an affordable handheld gaming system to compete with the 3DS. Where did I say the Vita should try to be a smartphone and where did I mention Angry Birds or other iOS/Android games? I'm talking about a Vita with the same features and overall direction but with weaker hardware and a reduced price point. These factors, couples with an earlier launch would increase the market share while allowing for cheaper game development. Furthermore, who wants multiplatform titles on a handheld? That approach didn't work for SEGA and it certainly isn't doing much for Sony either. Even if it did work, the Vita barely has any direct ports because the developers don't even want to invest that much effort. My strategy would have had a chance to succeed, unlike Sony's.

Both will probably be outsold by the Wii U on the other hand both will probably be profitable.

By the way, even if they are theoretically slight more powerful than the HD twins, moderns consoles will be able to show a moderated improvement in graphics also PC games will be easy and fast to port mainly because they will have a modern CPU/GPU combo.

That happens every generation.

As consoles age people start switching to PC. But then they break down and buy consoles for their exclusives when the new machines come out. Consoles rise and PC stays the same and then as the consoles age people look back to PC and the cycle repeates itself.

It's endless and means nothing.

So long as consoles have kick ass exclusive games like Halo and Zelda people will always buy them. So long as PC has the cutting edge tech people will be interested.

The lower the hardware specs, the faster they will be surpassed by smartphones and tablets. These phones/tablets will be able to pump out games that not only look much better than Vita games but are much more popular and many of them...free. I can tell you right now that Unchared Golden Abyss wouldn't be possible on 3DS-level hardware, at least not with severe comprimises.

MSony won't release a new console on par with the wiiu because they already have released a console that 's on par with wiiu=ps360.
Releasing a console that is as (low)powerful as the last gen only has worked once,with the wii.will never work again.

@VGKing

So what if the smartphones and tablets would surpass the Vita faster? Once again, Sony should not try to compete with these devices because they are not capable of doing so, especially with a device that is in another segment of the market. Also the Vita, as a result of having weaker hardware, would be more affordable, a major factor for dedicated gaming systems. Who cares if the Vita wouldn't be capable of playing Uncharted, that's what the PS3 is for. Why add the PS3 as a competing product in addition to tablets, smartphones and finally the 3DS. Why not just focus on properly competing with the 3DS? Wouldn't that be better than failing at everything?

I have to agree with Bouzane ...

One of the biggest problems with the PS-Vita is that Sony has not really made a dramatic shift in strategy from what they produced with the PSP and PS3, the market has changed dramatically in the last decade, and Sony is no longer in a position to make this strategy work. This is one of the reasons why I can't fully discount Sony committing suicide with the PS4.

No matter what Sony produced, within a couple of years phones and tablets would have more processing power than the PS-Vita and (with phone subsidies) would cost less than the PS-Vita so fighting a "battle" on technical capabilities is a losing strategy against these devices.

Nintendo has a drastically different approach which is far more viable although Nintendo did not execute it entirely correctly. Analogue sticks, d-pads, buttons, a second screen and 3D provide capabilities beyond what can be done on a smart-phone and make for much higher quality gameplay mechanics than can be done on phones; and the much higher revenues per game sold open up the possibility for much more in-depth gameplay experiences than are possible on smartphones at the moment.

I'm not convinced that Sony understands (or cares about) Nintendo's strategy, and they don't seem to see the flaws in their own strategy. Had Sony focused on the question "What can we add to our system that opens up gameplay mechanisms that can't be matched by smart phones" they would have been far more successful than trying to have a processing power advantage for 12 to 18 months.

PC gaming is on a rise thanks to Steam
It would just benefit even more from it and developers like DICE and some others did see how good their games sell on PC just cause they push so hard in terms of graphics.Of course BF3 has the best FPS MP out there but it moved a lot of Hardware at its release.
Developers of course would need to increase quality in their games so people get interested in them.

But yeah - PC would benefit the most from it.
PS4 would probably lose a lot cause most of their Games,especially exclusives are combined with pushing damn hard the graphic sector and destroying every other console in this Gen.

That's just it though, they can't go head to head with the 3DS either....Sony doesn't own the IP to any popular IP such as Pokemon or Mario. They could try and create something especially for Vita but that is a huge gamble. At least with games like Uncharted Golden Abyss....they know that will sell decently. Look at the best selling games on Vita...they are all console-style games.

and the best selling Vita games are still doing terribly, it is a strategic failure. We can see that their current approach simply does not work. If Sony does not have the IPs to compete with the 3DS then they should have invested their money into the appropriate game development, not hardware that increases costs and scares away customers and developers.