Is the Vita the only PlayStation console with poor third party support?

[KBG29]

potato_hamster said:

KBG29 said:

Tegra X1 and X2 are ancient tech at this point. Ryzen/Navi on 7nm will run circles around those chips. Battery tech is making serious leaps at the moment, which will make things even more viable in the next year or two. We basically have the perfect mix of tech to make this happen. Really, 7nm+ Ryzen/Navi + a Solid State Battery should offer an amazing Mobile Console Gaming expereince.

The reason 3rd parties didn't support Vita, is because Sony dropped Vita in favor of Xperia. Vita didn't fail simply because it wasn't a good platform. Sony killed Vita, they didn't want 3rd party support. 

Xperia Play and the 3G Vita didn't fail because people don't want gaming phones/connected portable gaming devices. They failed because people don't want unsupported platforms.

Xperia Play had no 1st or 3rd party titles, no Online Multiplayer, No Friends List, nothing. It didn't even ship with access to the PlayStation Mobile store. You had to turn off the safe apps feature in android, find the hidden PlayStation Mobile site, and download/install it yourself. On top of all of that, it was had terrible hardware specs compaired to other phones at the time. 

The 3G Vita's had multiple problems, but its biggest was Sony killing it off to focus on Xperia. On top of that though, the exclusive AT&T did it no favors at the time in the US. It lacked Online MP. It was and still is limited to 20MB downloads. Sony never even marketed the Skype feature. 3G Vita in its execution is no indication of people not wanting a connected Portable Gaming device. 3G Vita is an example of poor use of good technology, and absolutely no marketing.

Wrapping things up in connection with 3rd partyy support, I bring up the possability of a future PlayStation Portable that would have 100% 3rd party support thanks to a unified architecture with PS5. A connected version could be made as well, a 5G PlayStation Phone would be able to deliver an uncompromised online gaming expereince. 

The idea that no one wants a connected Portable gaming device, with a full lineup of current AAA 1st and 3rd party titles is complete nonsense. Switch is living proof of this at a small scale. A device that gets full 3rd party support and connectivity outside the home will only perform even more impressively. No one can convince me for a second that a connected Portable with Fifa, Madden, NBA 2K, Red Dead Redemption 2, Call of Duty Black Ops 4, Fortnite, PUBG, God of War, and Spider-Man would not be selling successfully right now.

This is not true.

The reason the Vita had terrible third party support was despite its comparatively great developer tools, and Sony's  unprecedented support of the platform (giving away developer kits, offering to send members of their team to assist in solving technical issues of bringing games to that platform) it was just very, very difficult to port a PS3/X360 game to the Vita. It required essentially remaking most of a game from scratch. It required massive, massive downgrades, and a disturbing amount of effort

... for crap sales on a platform that was too expensive and not powerful enough to offer the experience its userbase wanted to get from it. People wanted a handheld console they could play PS3 and Xbox 360 games on. They wanted Assassin's Creed, Borderlands 2, Madden, Uncharted, Fifa, Call of Duty, etc. on the go offering a user experience that was nearly as good as the PS3/X360. The Vita came well short of that. The big titles that were "ported" were poor substitutes for the home console experience. It has nothing to do with Sony's support and everything to do with them releasing a console that just couldn't perform the way they expected it to. The Vita's release was a still birth it just took a year for developers (and Sony themselves) to realize it was more effort than expected, and it just wasn't worth the effort.

So, we actually agree on something. Sony killed the Vita in favor of Xperia. They made a choice at the time based on a number of reasons to abandon Vita. SCEI initially was all in on the Vita there is no argument there, but at some point Sony Corp cut the cord. After that they had no interest in 3rd party support.

In ways it makes sense, Xperia was selling 50M units a year at that point, it is not impossible to see how executives at Sony Corp favored Xperia. I knew it would not work, but that is because I understand Sony's customer base better than they did. Sony has always failed when they try to ride on others success. Sony only succeeds on their own expereinces. No one wants Windows and Android devices from Sony, people want Sony devices, and Sony expereinces when they buy Sony.

Executives now, have to be looking at Xperia selling less than 10M a year, and loosing $1 Billion per year, and realize they made the wrong choice. Had they dumped $6 Billion into Vita over the last 6 years, it would have been massively more favorable for them. Going forward they need to take lessons from this. 

I completely agree with the Vita's short comings you mentioned. Having Vita and PS3/PS4 built on seperate architectures with the scope of games at the time just didn't work. It was an old business model, and it just doesn't work anymore. Even Nintendo has had to leave that model behind. That is why I continue to say, going forward, Sony needs to unify their ecosystem around AMD CPU/GPU tech. They need to be able to build one game that scales for 720p-1080p Mobiles to 4K-8K Home devices. The days of building a game twice for different architectures are over. 

That is the only way they compete going forward as the gaming market opens up. That is the only way they can fully support 1st and 3rd party gaming across every product in their lineup. AMD based PlayStation Portable, AMD based PlayStation Phone, AMD Based PS5, AMD based PS5 Pro, AMD Based Bravia TVs, AMD based PlayStation Cloud. They build one game, and it scales between 720p/30 - 8K/30 depending on the platform it is being played on. 

That is the future of gaming. Sony can either be a leader, or everyone else will do it and pass them up. Then they will loose 3rd party support on PlayStation all together.