Right now, Sony's got some pretty strong home consoles. The PS3 is teetering out just barely ahead of XB360 worldwide (pushing what people had associated with "best next-gen console" for 7th Generation in a surprising third place), and the PS4 is absolutely dominating everything. There's just one thing wrong with their current ecosystem: The Vita's horrible failure.

People can attribute a number of things to this. The biggest one (as far as Japan is concerned) is a sickening lack of Monster Hunter. Due to Capcom's insistence on not doing a real graphical upgrade to the series (it still looks mostly the same as the original PS2 game), they seem to continue pushing MH games backwards throughout the platforms to stay at the same level of graphical ability and thus justify not updating. This includes abandoning Vita for the 3DS. Don't get me wrong, I'm rocking my MH4U LE "New" 3DS in my pocket as I type this, but it was a major blow to the Vita as a whole.

In addition to no MH, the Vita also has a sickening lack of first party software. There has been no God of War exclusively for the Vita. No Sly exclusively for Vita. Sony has an extensive first party roster of games, and they have a lot of money now to invest in studios to push first party games out.

Another problem is the Vita's lack of diverse titles. The fact that most of the games on a platform that touts a touchscreen AND a touchpad can be easily translated to a controller is proof enough that the Vita doesn't utilize its own features very often. Now, I'm not saying that every game has to be 95% touchscreen, but what's so painful about working the UI and menu systems to accomodate touch?

And finally, the price. $200 is NOT competetive against the 3DS, nor is it an easily justifiable "impulse-ish" purchase (I'm a salesman for a living, and "impulse-ish" purchases are a thing; it's what happens when you're in the market doing research, and you decide to buy anyway).

What can be done? More Games, first of all.

A lot can be done, actually. The first thing that can be done is address the glaring issues. First of all, they need to do everything they can to fast track Monster Hunter Frontier for the Vita (and PS4, crossplay/crossbuy). Capcom is a company, and as they've shown their customers in the past, they operate on a strict "Will it make us obscene amounts of yen?" philosophy. PS4 should be an obvious jump for them, but they still need an excuse not to update the graphics. That's why they run crossplay with Vita. All it would take is a bit of moneyflow on Sony's part, and it might have it's prodigal son return.

But that still leaves the Vita without a lot of exclusive content. Sony need to gather up all of its best IPs, and they each need to have a new iteration come out for the Vita. Another inFAMOUS game, maybe another side story featuring Eugene, or maybe an e ven further step back to explore the origins of Nyx. An in-between-quel Uncharted, taking place before U3 and U4, or maybe even after U4. Another portable God of War, because I think there's still a few gods for Kratos to kill. Another Sly game, because the next logical step after Time Travel is Space travel or Dimension hopping. More Patapon, because that game would be ON FIRE on Vita. Another Lumines would be in the pipeline, too, because that game seems to do well. Echochrome would also benefit from the new inputs of the Vita, even though it hasn't had one since that time travel one. The Order: 1887 (lol) might move some units, as well, especially if they can evolve it from something from than a cover shooter. Another Unit 13 might do some damage, too, and Sony might even be able to turn it into their "Vita Shooter" franchise. More Ratchet & Clank would help, too, since Lombaxes are awesome. There needs to also be a killer racing app for the handheld, which would very obviously HAVE to be Gran Turismo, because everyone else is just pretending. A REALLY big one would be a reboot/sequel to Legend of Dragoon, using the touch screen for those QTE in combat that originally set it aside from the rest of JRPGs back in its day. And because the recent success of Bloodborne has shown FromSoftware's worth to Sony, maybe we can get a Demon's Souls remaster/sequel.

All of these games would have to be developed in a way that touch controls would be FAR more convenient, but at the same time you CAN use normal controls. This would prevent porting up to the PS4, but still allow the games to remain playable for PSTV.

Onto the Hardware.

The Vita as it is, is so close to perfect it hurts. What's it missing, you ask? R2 and L2, that's what. the "New" 3DS has two (kinda) analog sticks, 4 face buttons, and D-Pad, Start/Select, and FOUR SHOULDER BUTTONS. Why can't the Vita had four shoulder buttons? There's actually no good reason for it at this point. Another thing is the wireless on the Vita isn't powerful enough to maintain demanding connections. The reason I bring these things up is because these are things that determine how well Remote Play and PlayStation Now work, a few of the Vita's only remaining selling points at this point in time. There needs to be another redesign for the Vita, one that adds in AC wireless and secondary shoulder buttons. R3 and L3 still work fine from the touchscreen, so the only real problem is those pesky triggers. And those Vita memory cards? Ditch them and give us SD cards with support up to 128gb. Couple this new hardware release with a price drop to $150, and you've got a winning combination that can sell almost exclusively off of the streaming options. "But what about old Vitas?" Well, they all have bluetooth... and DS3/DS4 controllers run off of bluetooth... So why not just let them pair? Release an official charger stand for the Vita and bam, tiny little gaming station.

And all those games I mentioned earlier? They need to have "New" and "Legacy" controls, with the New controls applying to the "New" Vita and the PSTV, and the Legacy controls applying to people who are running on old Vitas that don't have controllers.

Next up on the chopping block is the PlayStation TV. Honestly, this should have been the thing that saved the Vita, but it's lack of support and games out of the gate has not done it any favors. Aside from the obvious thing the machine needs (Netflix), the PlayStation TV also needs AC Wireless as well so that plugging in no longer becomes necessary for those with AC routers. Now officially drop its standalone price to $50 and bundle it with every PS4, and voila: Everyone who buys a PS4 is now in some way a Vita owner.

Timing is Key

The first thing that would need to happen is Sony drop the price of the PSTV and start bundling it with every PS4. This would also be the NEW PSTV with AC Wireless, maybe even a new PS4 with AC. At E3, Sony would announce this "New" Vita to the masses, as well as all of the exclusive games for it. It would launch in November with the easier-to-develop games like Patapon and EchoChrome, and maybe one or two of the bigger titles. Over the next year, Sony would trickle these games out, hitting one big-name game a month. It'd be hard for Sony not to be successful in this venture, especially if this happened alongside a price drop for the PS4 and PS3.

So yeah, it'd be a pretty big undertaking. They might not even want to keep calling it the Vita, they might want to call it something new to distance itself from the Vita. But the point of all this is that Sony has built a gaming ecosystem, and the Vita is a weak link. If they don't fix it, it runs the chance of ruining their ecosystem.

3rd party support

Make a smartphone version with general apps as well not just games

Vita has been almost entirely third party support for a while now. The last 1st party game that was released was a free to play Fat Princess game in January.

with GTA 6

Not sure if adding R2 and L2 would help with the Vita in any way. Since the n3DS was only released in February in the West, sales were heavily influenced by the success of the original 3DS, which did not have these extra buttons.

Everything else, I basically agree with since more games is always good and price cuts can push more sales. However, it is really difficult to reverse sales this late in the Vita's life.

I think Sony might be leary of a phone version, what with the resounding "success" of the Xperia Play. That being said, I would like a Vita Phone.

It would be smarter for Sony to screw the Vita, just let it be a platform for niche japanese games and indies. That way they at least get back some of the losses it has incurred on them.

just let it go. its not like they are nintendo (bear with me) and have some form of interesting innovation around the corner. i dont know what kind of reboot it could conjure up. they are already $169.99 at least at my retailer so what would a price drop look like if not just $99.99?

i really think the problem was that it didnt appeal to the west. all the appealing handheld games are on the 3DS in the west. a Vita 2 would be a terrible decision at least from my POV. "What? i bought this Vita for $200 and got no enjoyment out of it. now its just being dropped for a new Vita 2?"

just let the thing die

I never attributed the New 3DS's success to the extra shoulder buttons (we all know it was dat analog nub), I was simply pointing out that if it could have the extra shoulder buttons, there was no reason the Vita couldn't.

If you've ever tried to play a game via Remote Play on the Vita or PSNow, you'd know that those extra shoulder buttons would be a godsend.

But that's why it's also not unreasonable to think that maybe they would just go ahead and move on to the Vita 2. It would explain the lack of 1st Party games as of late.