It was released before the tablet/smartphone boom when the Playstation brand was much stronger.

People are so quick to forget, but when the DS/PSP both launched, basically this:



and this:



and this:



Were your options for on the go entertainment. Video playback, web browsing, Facebook, 3D graphics, etc. on the go was unheard of.

people mention the hack and emulator but surely this isn't for the mainstream buyer of 70 odd million but maybe it is,i never been a handheld console man

I was in high school when it launched, and most of the people I know who got it had more movies and music on it then actual games. I went the DS route myself because I was more interested in the games.

MONSTER HUNTERRRRRRRR

But it also brought it down later, because games did not sell as expected, so publishers began to abandon the console.    And that is why the PSVITA is struggling to get support.  Publishers just remember the latest days of the PSP and not the first couple of years in which games could sell 6M., if it was good.

Here is my guess. One, the PSP came out in the era where Sony was still the King of Kings of gaming so more people were willing to give it a shot whereas now Sony hasn't been as successful in the past so people are more hesitant to buy the Vita. Two, the PSP was very easy to mod/hack in its early days (which is the main reason I got one).

Brand.
Great HW quality.
Multipurpose device.

For those saying that the PS brand is dying as the main reason for VITA sales: Wait for the PS4 to be announced to see if the brand is "dying".

I think the biggest reasons it found some success with the general market would be Sony's success on the PS2 and when it released it did have the niche of being a expansive multi-media device.

I would agree with zuvuyeay that being easy to hack and emulation would only be a draw for a specific group, albeit probably a proportionately bigger one than most systems, but it is hard to say that it would have significantly hurt sales if this were not an option. Depends on the overlap between those that bought and hacked the console and then, of those, the ones that would have bought it for different reasons.

The PlayStation brand gave it momentum, but with the ongoing scandals (illegal advertising, shifty marketing gimmicks, Lik-Sang forced shutdown), and the glitches in the hardware design (half-tactile square button, UMD accidental eject "ninja star", optical media in portable device), the designers saw that the sales were becoming less and less towards games and more towards portable emulation. I even considered getting it myself once just to play some SNES on the move...

The things it was capable of made you feel like you'd never need another device. Even in 2009 (when I got mine), the idea of watching movies on the go on a device that small just seemed amazing. Add to that "Console quality" games and all of the other stuff it could do--mine was my music player of choice--it was a must have item. My favorite portable of all time, at the time.