I see nothing wrong playing video games or doing whatever in public with a vita, same goes with the PSP. When I play Crisis Core, or Dissidia in the train to and from work other kids and adults look at it in amazement. (nyc subway)

The problem is the lack of public awareness, and the price.

I play handhelds at home. Regardless of the market though, the Vita's exclusive library has not been good enough for it to be a big success.

Lets not forget it was failing in Japan until recently, that was entirely to do with a lack of compelling software.

Needs games. All I see when I look at a Vita section in Walmart or elsewhere are a bunch of console ports.

They could use it to pilot a heavily armed exoskeleton, yep, it would be psychiatrically worrying rather than cool, but nobody would dare arguing with Vita gamers about it or giggling at them.

I'm surprised at the amount of people that won't pull their portables out in public. What are you guys 8 years old? I take my 3DS with me whenever I get my car serviced. Honesty most people waiting around are too busy fiddling with their smartphones to notice whether or not your using you Vita or 3DS anyway.

Agree, and I'd actually write harsher things than you: why on earth should playing a good game on a portable be lame and do actually lame things on a smartphone be cool? I really don't get it, and even by an educational point of view, smartphones and tablets, if used in an obsessive-compulsive way or in any way that overwhelmes the users instead of being useful to them, are harming them a lot more than gaming devices even when the latter are used in an excessively addictive way. Badly utilised smartphones and tablets are actually destroying important skills like writing and doing calculations, while in some cases, a minority, but a worrying large one, they are twisting social life into just caring for appearance and/or false values virally spread and instilled by marketers just for their employers sake. Don't think I'm a luddite, I think it's great that cellphones (smart or dumb ones), and Facebook and more in general internet, computers and portable devices help keeping in touch a lot easier with friends and relatives far away, but when teenagers sell their amateur porn photos, or even worse their bodies, for silly and useless things like buying more new clothes than necessary, or more phone traffic than necessary or even worse stupid ringtones and wallpapers for their smartphones, or to replace the latter even if they are still perfectly working, I think the limit of a healthy and valuable use of them has been lergely overshot.

It makes me laugh that people actually think it's embarrasing playing a handheld system in public. You guys do realize that 99.9% of people have better things to do than give a damn about some random person playing a video game in public right? As long as people aren't doing something obcene, rude, or downright crazy, they are generally ignored. I play my 3DS or Vita in public on a daily basis and no one has ever given me a weird look. And yet I see people in public playing video games on smartphones or tablets all the time in public, but I suppose that's fine but playing games on a device actually made for them is "lame"?

I have no shame, playing on 3DS on the train/bus all the time.

Try looking on Sony's online store instead. There's a lot more choice and some of the best offerings are digital only.