The Vita in its current form is not from this decade. The dedicated handheld market is rapidly becoming niche in the face of smartphones and tablets, it will be too little to sustain 2 competitors. The plan I'm envisioning would still hold on to the dedicated handheld, while at the same time transform the smartphone and tablet market, creating a bridge between the 2. Sony didn't anticipate this, but its not too late to react.

What needs to be done: Vita won't be a single handheld anymore but a series of products: a smartphone, a tablet and a dedicated handheld. 1 central OS and games require support for the oldest hardware, Vita 2011. My plan envisions these products to be better and faster each year with newer iterations, while not discriminating the oldest products in terms of gaming. Why not? A smartphone years down the road will inarguably have better hardware than the current Vita, if games were not made with this in mind, the Vita I'm holding in my hand would have problems.  The current Vita is more than capable enough to display great games. However the newer products will inevitably outpace Vita in terms of hardware: more ram, better quadcore cpu, more ram, better camera. In my plan these are trivial things to gaming but necessary for the Vita smartphone and tablet as a whole, since people will do more than just gaming on these devices.

New iterations each year:
Xperia Vita smartphone in the mid range segment
Xperia Vita tablet in the mid and high end market
2 Vita handhelds, cheapest loses OLED screen.

Xperia Play didn't do good, it was awful, it was too expensive, a cheaper Vita smartphone at 299/ 399 would do much better with better games to support it. Sony Ericsson doesn't exist anymore, it would have a much better chance (and design) this time.

The OS needs to have integration with Android, it needs to tap in the thousands of Android games and apps. The current app support is horrible. We wait months for a single app to come out. This needs to change.

The creation of the Vita ecosystem. In order to achieve this plan, the Vita would need to be placed under the good care of the Mobiles division.

I think there is potential there and it's probably Sony's best hope for mobile gaming success. An Xperia with playstation games could be quite appealing.

Or.....drop to $169-$199

Much simpler.

Even after the pricedrop, I don't think it will sustain the Vita for years. My plan includes this pricecut. The cheapest Vita having an LCD screen will be 179 including a memorycard. But the pricecut card being played out early will not leave much room in the coming years when sales slow down. Thats why its essential besides games, to look for other opportunities to spur sales.

3ds did just that. The games came and now its just cruising.

Dedicated handhelds are far simpler to deal with. Mass market price and killer apps.

I should have said "But the pricecut alone will not sustain Vita sales"

but if they do that will all the Vita games work on every device? Is it even a console anymore if some games work on one and not another? I think they have to keep from fragmenting a userbase that is already small.

that was his whole point, all games run on all systems. That way you dont isolate potential purchases to smaller groups

Still think it should just be smartphone. But at least your idea approaches this concern.

Not agree... here is why

Xperia and PS-Vita both support the Playstation Mobile games. Those games suck... a lot

The iOS and Android phones dominate the Smart Phone and Tablet sector and Sony has no OS or eco-system to compete with that and Sony is also having lot of financial troubles. Even Microsoft with their healthy financials are struggling to make any imprint into the Smart Phone and Tablet markets.

I think the PS-Vita is great gaming hardware and it also has some excellent games already. Sony needs to focus their investments regarding PS-Vita on reducing hardware cost, reduce proprietary memory card costs to be in line with SDHC, increase capacity of proprietary memory card to SDXC levels, increase battery life to iPad 3 levels... and other than that focus on Software and Services.

It may also be good for them to make their device a working cell-phone so people have to carry less crap around. If they go that route, they also need to improve the camera included to Smart Phone standards which means from 2MP to 10+MP. If they could make it a decent camera, give it good battery life and have it be a decent phone... then I would stop carrying my iPhone and start carrying only the PS-Vita.