Capn' Jack tried to give one when he said it was Acceptable but the doomsayers poo poo'd him.

Being totally frank, here: Sony NEVER understood gaming. From the horrendous Polygon Man advertising campaign on the PS1 to the launch of the PS2 without a single first party game to the total fuck-up of the PS3's launch, Sony never knew what they were doing. It's just that the competition just kept fucking up even more.

You have no idea how much it pained me to sit back and say "What the hell, Nintendo? Why are you doing this!?" As they made one obviously boneheaded decision after another. Meanwhile, Sony sat at the top of the industry for doing absolutely nothing but making decent hardware and waiting for Rockstar, Capcom, Square, Konami, Namco, etc. to make the next big system seller. It was frustrating.

Sony seems to be doing better these days but their obvious lack of focus has finally become apparent. It's lightening hard as hell outside! I'm getting the fuck off of the internet!

100$ memory card is not required, you just picked the most expensive one. I've been doing just fine with a 20$ memory card.

Some of your conclusions puzzle me. Clarification would be nice.

"Sony learned nothing from the PSP’s failure" -- The PSP has sold like 70 million units or so, if I'm not mistaken. What is your threshold for failure? 80 million? 100 million? And what logic do you base that threshold on?

"Now, it’s succeeding to some degree, though it’s still far behind both of its competitors." -- What metric are you referencing here? I know total sales is a popular fan talking point, but even then, aren't the 360 and the PS3 within a couple million units of one another? And isn't the installed base virtually even? If it's sales rate, which is probably a more relevant metric from a business standpoint, isn't the PS3 ahead by a significant amount per month? Business isn't a sprint, it's a long distance event. You measure the success of your product from when your product was launched, not from when a competitor's product was launched.

I think what bothers me most about your post, however, is the way you lay down absolutes for how gaming should be, as if your preferences and opinions are shared by everyone in the entire world, without question. You don't want to play "home console" games on a portable system? That's cool. Looking at how well games like God of War, Gran Turismo, and Monster Hunter have sold on the PSP, though, makes me believe that there is certainly a market there.

Personally, I think it's foolish to point at a game and say that it doesn't belong here, or it doesn't belong there. Makes zero sense to me. Plenty of people play their portable systems at home, especially in Japan. A portable system should NOT be about exclusion, but instead about diversity. "Home console" games on Vita are perfectly fine as long as they ALSO have a good selection of bite-sized games.

Finally, declaring any system "dead" a few months into its life-cycle is laughable. It's something history tells us quite clearly is a waste of time and effort.

Sony did plenty to make the PS1 and PS2 a success.

1. Strong reach to 3rd partys, it made the PS1 a huge successs. Sony tried very hard to get as many 3rd party titles on the system as they could.

2. Marketing to a more adult audience. Before the Playstation came out, mostly just kids played videogames. All of a sudden teenagers and adults were playing it too.

3. Cheap price, Sony kept the PS1 cheaper than either of it's competitors.

4. Making the PS2 more of a multimedia console, now people who weren't even interested in gaming were buying PS2s simply for DVDs.

You sound exactly like the gameoverthinker, saying Sony never knew what they were doing and became successful by accident. No, they did a lot of right and made plenty of innovative decisions. If they didn't know what they were doing the gaming would still be exclusive to nerdy kids sitting in their rooms. Just because Sony has made some very bad decisions recently doesn't mean they have NEVER understood gaming.

Well all I know is that the PS3 proves SONY knew what gaming was about eventually.

With PS Vita SONY showed they knew what price points were about but kinda forgot the gaming bit which they sooo brought back with force after PS3's disastrous first year and a half.

I remember the PS3 turnaround beginning with Warhawk...for me that was the minor turnaround, then post MGS4 everything was non stop awesomeness and the sales rise proved this.

I disagree with so much of this. However, I do believe there is a massive problem with the way Sony is viewing video gaming and their consumers. Expensive console pricing is only a small aspect of the large picture. Using their console as a gateway market to other, nongaming platforms is a large problem as well. Not to mention making like 6 or 7 different versions of your console each with different strengths and weaknesses so extreme it becomes pointless to try to keep up with each model.

This talk about mobile gaming needs to die. Every time I read it a laughter of frustration comes over me. Journalist are completely wrong about this like they were about myspace gaming hurting the video gaming industry. And for someone to be saying it now when 3DS is posting great numbers, makes even less sense than before when the console was struggling. At least when 3DS was struggling, people could make crazy claims (I said price and hey, maybe someone should start paying me) because there was no factual way to dispute it without a paradigm shift for the console. Today however, there is absolutely no excuse for this and with that in mind, I call it poor journalism.

Also, I do agree on mainstream media being extremely quick to jump all over Nintendo with the, "Doom n gloom" articles but not as quick to embrace the same rhetoric when addressing either Sony or Microsoft. This si something that I see as unfair but to be honest, I rather enjoy seeing Nintendo sell right through it because it goes to show the bias the media has is not a disruption to the company in the least.

Wow another bs thread about Sony. Way to go. Buy they way just be cause you own all these systems dosnt make you more or less bias against another, if the gaming public would open thier eyes and see the beauty of the system you'll understand why it's 250 and why it's the best console todate. It's hated on by people that never played one or spent too little time with one to get a grasp on the system. Call your self a gamer? I call you a troll.

The idea that the "doom and gloom" surrounding the 3DS was much worse than for the Vita is interesting to me. However, I think it's a mistake to think that the two systems emerged from the same situation. There are differences.

First, the early hype was a lot different, and so were expectations. Using Destructoid as an example, because I clearly remember their round-table discussions for each system pre-launch, they fully expected the 3DS to be the best thing ever and the "PSP2" to be a flop. Yes, the 3DS opinions nose-dived right before and right after launch, mostly because of price, but expectations had already been established.

The thing is, the Vita is going to be measured against the PSP, while the 3DS will be measured against the DS--one of the best selling systems of all time.

Perhaps most importantly, however, is the thought that the Vita isn't getting as much "doom and gloom" because some people looked very foolish after declaring the 3DS dead. So, really, Vita has the 3DS to thank in that regard.

It's a shame to see Sony where they are at the moment. I kind of agree with D21Lewis. The Sony of PS1/PS2 era weren't an amazing company. They did whatever they had to do to get third-party support, made a decent enough console, and then sat back and watched the money roll in. Insulted the competition every now and again.

The Sony of today seem different. I could go through the reasons of why I think they're so much better today, but I'd probably just be shot down, so I won't.

Regardless, I hope they stay in the industry for a long time to come. For me, they're better than ever lately and I can't imagine I'd care half as much about gaming without them.