An owners Retrospective on where Sony went wrong:
Storage. The Ipod shuffle came with 2 and 4x more memory in 2005 than the Vita 2000 in 2014 even though it only played songs. 32 and 64GB cards at about 100 to 120 Sony has effectively doubled the cost of the device to be used as they admit customers use it as an iPod of games. They really need to get rid of proprietary storage. They should just have us DRM format a regular SD card for use with the system. Then they could have even afforded to bundle memory so that it really could be ready to use as people would happen to use the device. I really think that if they ever do create another portable console that is a mantra they should repeat to themselves. Ipod of games.
Most of the initial development funds for the consoles were badly spent. Resistance Burning Skies, Modnation Racers, Little Deviants, Reality Fighters, Ratchet and Clank FFA, Escape Plan, Forbisher Says, Smart As and quite a few more probably shouldn't have been made. If I could get 8 more alternative titles with similar budgets in the right genres that could help the platform greatly. I mean 2 of those are very dead and declining ips.
Sony doesn't understand markets outside of teenage to mid twenties douchebag male and their software line up shows it. Smart As and Little Deviants weren't bad games but they probably wont appeal to grandma and grandpa cause the names are kind of vulgar and depraved sounding. If Brain Age were made by younger more immature folk this is what it would be. This kind of thing will prevent them from appealing to the larger markets.
Sony really need to find a way to easily update the licenses on their older library of games so that they can be quickly and easily added to new devices. PS classics roll out was a disaster and part of the reason I waited on the platform longer than I initially thought I would. Working with making those licenses more easily transferable with themselves and smoothing out the process for 3rd parties should be a high concern especially as they increase the number of devices capable of playing the games. There are still some games like the
No marketing at all that I've seen. Software efforts mean nothing if I don't know the software exists. I keep up with forums and internet news and half the time I don't have the skinny on when stuff is gonna happen on Vita(Still wanting a Rogue Legacy date). How depressing must it seem to someone whom isn't such a voracious consumer such as myself. They really need a Nintendo Direct style PSN thing to inform consumers about new games and such. A digital magazine for Vita maybe. A campaign of attractive females playing Vitas in theaters at Sony films during previews. Anything in addition to and more substantial than a blog.
3rd parties are on mobile. Getting Unity support is a good start but to make sure that Vita can at least get parity you are going to have to pull an ID@Xbox and subsidize the unity addon costs them incentive to include your platform. Free marketing and 10-25% in royalties as opposed to standard 70/30 would probably give a ton of attention to the platform. Might even entice SE and Crapcom EA and a few others back on over into your camp for their smaller projects and that they can get to your platform at competitive price points.
Given the success of the iPod and it's lack of retail stuff I would argue that exclusives period are all you need like iTunes and that Sony and Vita simply don't have as much content and variety to match that market. Sad thing is PSV matches up to the iPad really well hardwrae wise and shouldn't require much tweaking to get software running on PSV it's just that Sony hasn't made that sexy enough proposition to developers.
