Sony's continued supporting their older consoles since the release of the PS2, when the PSX was the past console, however, it's never really hurt the company during those times.  Just like the PSP compared to the Vita, the PSX compared to the PS2 is a difference in power,  or the PS2 in comparison to the PS3, but at the same time, the Vita has no other portable that's as powerful as it is, where the Dreamcast, Gamecube, and Xbox were comparable to the PS2 while the 360 is comparable to the PS3.  Even if the consoles didn't get as many exclusives, which we'll use the PS3 as an example, there would always be the third party support as games seemed to be more profitable on the PS3 and 360 than just releasing them on the PS2.

Even if Japanese only, there's been a lot of games that have been announced and released for the PSP lately.  Not only could this the reason why the Vita lacks any games, but also be the reason why the sales of Vita in Japan are so poor.  The Vita is not only having to contend to the 3DS, but also to the PSP.  

I think Sony should announce that as of a certain date they're no longer going to be printing any new PSP games although will give some exceptions if developers are far along into development.  Any games already released prior to this date will get printing as needed.  This would force developers to move to either the Vita or 3DS.  While some developers might instead choose to support the 3DS, there's a good chance that other developers would move over to the Vita.  The rare game that's been mutliconsole on both the Vita and 3DS seems to have sold close to the same amount.

This would get more games for the Vita and get more of the Japanese to start investing in the Vita since there'd be no new PSP games.  Also with more Japanese PSP games, there'd be more of a possibility that the Vita might get more games in the west.  Very small probability since barely any Japanese games make their way outside of Japan or China, but a probability nonetheless.

I know this isn't going to happen, but who else thinks Sony should abandon the PSP.  Or atleast abandon the PSP for a year or two, and maybe after a year or two allow developers to start releasing games on the system again.

Yeah, but if Sony announce no more psp games. (which I'm not sure they can do, I'm not sure exactly how that works)

I'd bet most japanese devs would move to 3DS instead of Vita.

In this case yes because Japan still aggressively supports PSP, but killing PSP would be a huge mistake

Totally agree with this.

Sony should cut Vita's price to $169 + 8gb storage card  and make PSP games run easier on it.  Then Just kill the old PSP already.

Do Sony or third parties develop games for PSP instead of Vita? I don't think Sony "supports" PSP, they don't launch more games for it. What can they do, stop selling the PSP and lose even more money? Lack of UMD compatibility, direct or through an adapter, strongly hinders the public perception of Vita in Japan.

It's one of the things hurting, for sure. It's a tricky situation imo.

I feel like the situation only applies in Japan, because PSP sales certainly don't seem to be hurting the Vita in the west. In Japan, I'd imagine that PSP is pure profit by now. And in Sony's financial situation, I'm sure that's a very good thing. I mean, I don't think they've developed a PSP game since last year, so the effort is all being done by third parties, which is excellent for them.

But it's obviously coming at the expense of the Vita. Unless Sony have some kind of agreement with third parties that they migrate to Vita as long as Sony lets them continue on PSP for the time being, then the longer Sony leave them on PSP, the tougher it gets to recover. 3DS will have just sold more and more consoles, Vita will have sold less and less, and there'd just be no reason to move to Vita over 3DS other than the odd cases of certain franchises which have a bit of an affinity with Sony and probably wouldn't do as well on a Nintendo platform.

I feel like one of the biggest problems with Vita, at least in Japan, is lack of UMD drive. Sure, you can buy most of the games on PSN, but if I were a Japanese gamer I don't think I'd see much reason to upgrade to Vita when my PSP collection would be worthless unless I used UMD passport, and even then I'd have to buy an expensive memory card to store everything. I'm not really sure if there's much of a solution to this problem since it would hike the Vita price up even further if they'd have built a UMD drive into it, and price is already a problem. Perhaps some kind of optional external extra would help (if that's possible)?

But anyway, Q1 in Japan is looking comparatively peachy in Vita terms - 18 games coming in a 2 month window, with a few big name titles (Phantasy Star Online 2; Tales of Hearts R; Soul Sacrifice; One Piece Pirate Warriors 2). Even with such a nice release schedule there's a downside though. A lot of the games are dual-console releases (i.e. One Piece) which will hurt Vita version sales, other games are just upgraded ports (i.e. Tales of Hearts), leaving very few original titles which will shift hardware. I'm hopeful that any PS3/Vita titles might give Vita a boost purely because Japanese love their handhelds, but PSP/Vita titles (such as God Eater 2) probably aren't going to do so well - again, it's a case of "why upgrade when PSP is still getting it?"

I don't know what the solution is really. If I were Sony I would kill the PSP and help fund third parties to move over to Vita, until they've established themselves and then leave them to it. I kinda thought that Sony's focus on the west with Vita in its first year was a conscious effort to convince Japanese devs "hey look, console is selling in the west, that gives you more opportunities to localise than you'd have on PSP!" But that hasn't really happened yet (though, Vita is doing a lot better in NA/Europe than Japan).

So I just don't know really. It's very interesting - but kind of painful - to watch, in any case.

In japan only, but I guess that in turn is effecting japanese developers, some of whom make games which are relavant in the west. Ultimately Sony isn't actually supporting the psp beyond continuing to produce units, its the japanese 3rd party developers who continue to make games for it. The one thing sony should have done was to try and facilitate a transition of sorts, like selling PSVita's with pre-installed psp classics like monster and maybe one of the newer popular titles like One Piece RPG.

yes it does. the games coming out for psp are selling the system, and vita needs those games to sale.

As far as i know PSP is dead everywhere except Japan. So to answer your question no

Sony will never cut the Vita's prise to 169$, 199$ is is more likely