Why did the PS Vita fail?

[Leynos]

RolStoppable said:

Leynos said:

No. The hardware was great. Vita was seriously impressive. It wasn't hard to work on. Vita power-wise was as impressive in 2012 as PSP was in 2004. Playing it even 8 years later Vita feels like a premium device. The Oled screen is a treat to look at.

That's exactly what the hardware was meant to convey. But it's bad hardware, because it had significant problems. Processing power and screen raised the production costs, so the console had to be sold at a loss to hit a competitive price and in turn forced the decision to implement proprietary memory cards in order to be able to charge a premium and mitigate the losses. Those cards are also hardware and I don't think anyone would argue that they were not bad.

Furthermore, the hardware was not in line with Sony's sales pitch of "console quality on the go" because it lacked L2, R2, L3 and R3 buttons. Games that needed those buttons had to rely on the back touchpad of the console and that wasn't a good solution.

If you limit yourself to only certain parts of the hardware, then it may seem like the hardware was good. But taken as a whole, it clearly wasn't.

Then I guess every Nintendo handheld ever is bad hardware by your skewed definition.

Last edited by Leynos - on 25 August 2020