Nintendo Wii U and PS Vita totally deserve what has become of them

[gigantor21]

I agree that both systems bombing was likely a foregone conclusion...but for different reasons.

To be honest, I don't know if the Vita would've done much better even if it used regular SD cards. The director of Killzone 2 and 3 stated that Liberation was a near-PS3 level investment, which likely explains why so few developers did anything of that scale or fidelity on the device. Problem was, that was pretty much the only way it could have any mass appeal--Sony themselves trumpeted the Vita as a "console on the go" powerhouse. Yet neither Sony nor third parties thought making those kinds of games on the Vita was worth the investment most of the time. Nor did they seriously utilize the Vita's unique features that often--Tearaway was a real outlier in that it used the Vita holistically and actually made it fun. Thus there really isn't anything worth buying the device for outside of very specific niches.

As for the WiiU, it's a core centric console without the specs, features or third party support that makes core consoles successful. Iwata wanted the device to appeal more to the crowd that they lost with the Wii, but all it did was confuse and alienate the people they won over last gen. Beyond that, they clearly had no idea what to do with the Gamepad in terms of integrating it with major titles--many of which work just fine without it. Intergrating the Wiimote into key titles was never an issue last gen. That the software doesn't leverage the hardware in unique or interesting ways only made it less appealing to potential buyers.