If it´s life time sales are higher than the GameCube´s...

I love you so much, my purple little lunchbox  T.T

jokes aside: I would say that the profits are the important factor to determine if a system qualifies as being a success or not, and to a lesser degree marketshare.

...the Vita is a "success" like the GameCube was

That's the only one that matters.

Not really.  I mean, yes profit is the point, but it's also a question of how much profit it makes.  If the Vita makes a profit of a million dollars over a life of five years, that's not a success.  I mean, sure they made a million dollars, but they could have made far more money investing in other activities.  Simply being profitable isn't enough.  

well i will be watching the numbers to see how the pricecut helps. sony listened to the complaints about the pricing and at least addressed it for the most part. for some it will never be cheap enough.

to me its successful seeing how it doesnt collect dust for the most part. i go back and forth some weeks i barley play it, other weeks im more on the go and use it much more.

By that thinking nothing is a success, because there's always the possibility that a company could have invested in something different and made more profit.

You can't know that something was absolutely 100% the best investment, but you can take a reasonable guess.  To make things simpler, lets use games as an example.  Let's say that Sony earns an average of 20 million dollars for a game they spend 50 million dollars creating.  So, if they make a game for 50 million dollars, and only make 5 million dollars on the investment, then they know they made a poor choice.  It's not an exact science, but companies know how much of a return they should be getting for whatever amount of money they spend.  

To give an extreme example, lets say the Vita ends up profiting $1 dollar over its life.  While Sony may not know exaclty how much they could have made on that investment, they know for sure they could have made more than a dollar.

Vita is already a success, check the tie ratio and include the digital sales. It's really high for a handeld, so it won't be loss for Sony.

Plus Vita users seem satisfied with the handeld, and so am I.

I don't see a reason for it to be called a failure because of low hardware sales.

Even if it only made a dollar, it would still be a success (albeit an extremely minor one). You're arguing that something isn't a success because something more succesful could have been made. That doesn't make the initial investment a failure, just less of a success.

I wouldn't rely so much on developers in an era where a game can sell 5 million copies and still not be considered successful by its publisher.

First and foremost, the console has to be profitable for Sony -- not necessarily in strictly financial terms.

I suppose that's about it. Of course, there's more to the situation than simply "success" or "failure." Selling 50 million consoles might be a success, but selling 100 million would be more successful. And if the Vita only manages to scrape by with the bare minimum of what is necessary to be called a success, it's not very much of a success.

Being profitable is the key thing. But for us? I think over 100k a week on average, so 5.2mil a year, will be deemed acceptable.