great numbers, second best selling handheld made by Sony

LOL...great spin on what should be the very least very dissapointing numbers for a system almost a year old.

Honestly, with the Wii U, Durango, and PS4 coming out; I don't know how Sony will be able to convince developers to support such risky console.

Its a vicous cycle. Developers dont want to make games for a system thats not selling, amd people wont buy the system till ther are enough quality games for it. This id why nintendo will always be fine as they have so many exclusives that will always sell, regardless of what the third party development is.

Here is what you dont understand: The PS3 is a home console and the Vita is a portable. The portable space has new competitiors that are shrinking the market and these portable consoles need to make a stand.

This is nothing like the PS3 situation and to be honest the PS3 did terrible considering it came after the PS2 wich was a hugely sucessful system (and the PS1 before it). Sony completely dropped the ball with the PS3 and let Microsoft take the lead on the home market. It was and it is terrible. They are finally getting the upper hand, but to be honest were on the last 2 years of the gen and new consoles are about to be announced. Microsoft was the winner of this gen, Sony lost big time after having had the consumers by the balls in the previous gens (all this considering only the HDconsoles), opening themselves up to defeat.

This time with the Vita though, the consumer isnt waiting for Sony to lower their price point, they are buying iPads and Iphones. It isnt the same thing. Also, while not bad, Sony isnt the developer Nintendo is and doesnt have all these iconic IP's in the system that are garanteed to show up. Honestly, i cant even tell if there will be god of war games for it since they got that developer to make an uncharted game instead.

The problem is that PS3 is a system that had before it was even born:

1 - Gran Turismo
2 - Mainline Final Fantasy
3 - Final Fantasy Versus
4 - GTA
5 - Devil May Cry
6 - Metal Gear Solid 4

Plus, it always had the 360.

Among many, many others...
Vita has spin-offs, and one (incidentally the bigger one) that is pretty much guaranteed to be mediocre by critics.

Most people don't seem to get the importance the 360 had for the PS3 long term viability. If the 360 didn't exist, it's probable that most third parties would have migrated to the Wii, as the userbase difference would be huge. 360+PS3 made a partially viable crossplatform for developers, PS3 alone would have had much more problems to obtain third party games.

One other point is that PS3 succeeded the most successful console of all time.

Vita succeeded a console that was left for dead like no other. For comparison, Wii (Wii!!) had better support in its final days. PSP market simply imploded though, no way to support it.

And to add to the problem, it was a selective implosion, as it's still kicking and well in japan.

PS3 had the benefit of releasing while the 360 was established and leeched support from it being as though it wasn't too hard to port over to the PS3 (depsite the initial growing pains which saw the 360 being the lead platform and the PS3 version suffering as a result).  The Vita doesn't have that "companion" relationship with another box, certainly not with the 3DS.

Plus, I think Sony isn't in the position to fight like they were with the PS3 - when they created new models and dropped the price relatively early.  It remains to be seen if they do the same for Vita but their not in a position to take that kind of hit again.

I'm not too convinced that this is the PS3 situation all over again.

nem has already made a good point but ...

We've discussed this before there were many advantages the PS3 had that the PS-Vita doesn't. The PS3 was the successor to the best selling home console ever, all third party publishers were betting heavily on it, and there was another platform (XBox 360) that allowed cross platform development to recover game development costs. Beyond this, the PS3 was selling almost twice as quickly as the PS-Vita is and, when you consider than handheld systems generally sell better than home consoles (because multiple can be sold per household), this is not a good comparison for the PS-Vita.