Saw some thread saying the Vita should be called PSDeath.

Althought it was a troll thread, it brought to my mind a valid subject of discussion:

How the Vita stands now with the PS4 release?

Well, I played a entire mission of METAL GEAR SOLID 5 yesterday lying in my bed with PSVita remote play, it was quite a nice experience and, althought sometimes the Remote Play doesn´t work that well, this is a neat function.

It is quite a sight to see Snake in such glorious form in a little handheld screen, being sneaky never felt so cool.

But, in the end, the Cross-Buy feature is much more appealing, afterwards I played Lone Survivor in my Vita for a while, which is a PSPlus free cross-buy game that also work on my PS3.

So, being able to play these indies in both consoles is a very interesting feature.
But, in the end, the Vita have to hold on his own, with it´s own games. In that department, it is ok, not great, but ok.

The thing is, if sony is selling each Vita with some profit, it is really fine, the handheld can hold on its own for 5, 7 years, like the PSP, which I still play from time to time, because of amazing RPGs like Star Ocean and Valkyria Chronicles.

But, if Sony is selling the thing at a loss, this is a very stupid strategy because the system will never be a hot item or anything. It will get to 20-25 million at most, but this is still ok, as long as the business model is healthy and, to be honest, very humble in the forecasts.

I like my Vita, I use it much more than my 3DS, mainly because Sony gives me free games on it. But, I bought 5 games on my Vita (Fifa, Uncharted, LBP, Persona 4, Silent Hill) and only 3 on my 3DS, so, giving out games paid off, because made me love the handheld enough to also buy some interesting stuff.

So, keep the name VITA but do no lower the price, instead, keep it at a level that Sony can have profit on each unit, and then, let the games do the talk. Step by step, RPG by RPG, the library will get as sexy and awesome as the PSP´s library was (and still very much is).

It is not about being the top dog, it is about getting the prey (the profit), even Nintendo can be healthy with the WiiU and its not so good sales, as long as the sales justify the existence of the product, it can hold on its own in terms of profit, it is all good.

Think about this: I open a Restaurant in front of Mcdonalds and Burger King.

The Mcdonalds joint makes 250k in profit every month.

Burger King makes 230k.

I can get 35k in profit.

If you look at this picture, looks like I am the failure, but I am actually very happy: 35k profit will ensure my little restaurant exists forever, in a very profitable way.

So, profit is the name of the game, not being number one, not killing the competition, just being healthy.

I get that this concept is weird for americans, because their culture is so focused on winning as a "being better than the others" type of deal. But, it really isn´t. As long as you get want you really want, you won. And what any company really wants is profit

That is why the PSVITA is actually in very good shape.

Yes. The Vita doesn't have to sell a hundred million units to be a success, or even half of that number. If they make a good profit on the system, software tie ratio, memory card sales and Plus subscription, then they will be alright. I can't imagine that they are at all pleased with the sales though. And they should not be. With the R&D spent on the Vita, they could've used that money on elsewhere that could've made them more money. The Vita is not in good shape, but they will do alright for themselves.

Usually the worst selling console dies off pretty fast because it lacks games. Luckily Vita owners will always at least have remote play games. The console could easily end up the longest living system to never have good sales. Plus it's doing ok in Japan.

Hey Joe, there is more brother, the Vita also have the ENTIRE PSP digital library, the PSOne digital library (you can play Resident Evil 2 right now on your Vita if you want...) and hundreds of cool indie games.

I agree. About the being pleased part, it really depends on how much they make on digital sales, I suppose that can be a really steady source of revenue since it costs so much less than putting something at a physical retailer.

The sad thing is that by the time it has enough HW sales for developers to show serious interest in it, the next one will be launched.
I hope sony go for a lower price point next time and dont invent a new memory card to put the prices back up.

OLED needs to come back and rear touch pad and both cameras need to go. very few games use them (properly) but they are there just to add costs.

I love remote play. There is this moment when you are sitting on the toilet playing a full fledged and gorgeous MMO like Final Fantasy XIV that you really have to just stop and admire that.

That and cross buy have kept the system alive for me. Not that there aren't games I want to play but just I have to shift focus among different systems and handhelds usually take a backseat to my home consoles. But just knowing I have free vita games to download keeps me at least booting the Vita back up. Between that and the awesome Plus discounts you get, Sony knows how to keep its customers interested in its hardware.

My friend once swore up and down giving away free games was stupid, robbing themselves of sales. Since I bought a physical copy of uncharted on Vita AFTER already beating it for free as a Plus member, I disagree.

As previously stated by others it doesn’t need to sell tens of millions of units to be a financial success and sales will only increase in the future especially with more games, bundles ,price cuts and features/services etc. That being said I’m still waiting for FF7 crisis core and KH BBS to be added to the PSN store as well as a possible FF type-0 localization. I would also like to see more HD collections ported to vita possible sequels to popular PSP games for example a kh spin off prequel set in the keyblade war with 4 player co-op where you get to create your own character that has different classes and mechanics to other popular PSP/vita games ( Monster Hunter,Phantasy star, God Eater, lord of Arcana,Ragnrok Odyssey etc.) would be great and shift consoles.

It's fine as a system. All this talk about what it needs and doesn't need is trivial.
If sony wants it to compete in a bigger market, they need to add phone capabilities.
Otherwise, it's fine where it is. It'll get there...it won't be pretty, but it'll get there.

They should take this time to think about what they really want to aim for.

Profit is not all that matters and profit is not going to keep you in business forever.

Think of it from a store's perspective. I make money for each Vita game sold. So, having a Vita section makes me a profit. But, that Vita section takes up a lot of store space. What if I could use that space to stock something else that will bring in more profit? In that case, bye bye Vita.

Then, think of it from Sony's perspective. How much is the Vita making? How much of my resources are being devoted towards the Vita? What else could I be using the developers, marketing budget, and factories for? This is called opportunity costs. The Vita needs not just to make a profit, but make more profit than the next viable option. As it stands in terms of hardware and software sales, it is hard to imagine that the Vita is the best option for the Vita right now.

In home remote play is not a major feature. Just ask Nintendo. Sony initially made it seem like you could play the Vita more or less anywhere that you had Wifi which would have been really awesome. But, the reality is that it is a rather limited service. Maybe Playstation Now will make better use of the Vita, but I don't think it will work very well if the PSVita is only OK at streaming from the PS4.

The PSP Vita comparison is not apt. The PSP was beaten soundly by the DS, but it was successful in its own right in hardware and software. The PSP had 52 million sellers. The DS had 129. The 3DS has 25 so far. The Vita has one. You can factor in PSPlus stuff and digital sales, but even so that's absolutely terrible. If we assume every game sold 50% digitally and 50% retail, we still only have 6 million sellers which means only 6 games have sold more than 500,000 retail. Vita software in 2013 was roughly a third of what PSP software was in 2006. Of the top 100 selling games of 2013 0 were released on the Vita.

The Vita is just doing really really poorly, and it's hard to imagine a scenario where the Vita division is worthwhile to Sony as a whole. It's hard to see why retailers would continue stocking it or its games in the US, and it's hard to see why Sony would be motivated to develop anything with the intention of release outside of Japan. It's hard to imagine the Vita is the best use of Sony's time, money, and energy.