Are Sony making any sort of profit off the hardware sales? If so why not just keep it around because a sale is a sale even if the profit is low. As a Vita owner i hope to keep getting these JRPGs and other gems it has had recently.

PS3 won't be dead because it has another major price cut left in it. Software sales are still huge so they will sell it for another 2 years at least. Maybe even a second price cut to 99$ before all is said and done. 

Price cuts won't do anything this late in the gen. We learned that from the Wii.

the wii was always cheap and it died long before the wii u came out. ps3 has outsold the Wii U and even the X1 for a lot of this year. Next year with a price cut it will get another 2 years on the market. I predict 8M more sales from now at least. 

No of course not. It can still for years as a PS4 controller.

I can't really see the PS3 being discontinued so soon considering how healthy software sales are.

I just learned that the XBOne has now sold more software then the Vita. I also found out that there hasn't been a Vita game released since Killzone: Mercenary that I would actually buy for it :(

As long as I get Gravity Rush 2, idgaf.

PS3 still definitely has legs in it. It has a large collection of great games, plays blu-rays etc. With a good price drop, they can capture more sales from casual purchasers looking for a new toy to entertain the kids(but don't want to drop $400 for a PS4-X1). The PS3 has been holding a 50-60k baseline for a while without a price drop and any new significant games. I think it still has a good two years in it. The Vita on the other hand... I don't know what went wrong there. They have the library. Killzone, Wipeout, Uncharted, Injustice, MvC3, Minecraft, Gravity Rush, LBP, Metal Gear collection etc.It perplexes me when people say the Vita games are all indies/portswhen the 3DS's main draws are basically ports of old gams(Ocarina of time) or ports of Wii U games(Smash Bros/Mario Kart). Is Pokemon that big of a system seller?

This is what I see.

Vita is kind of that friend that follows you around and is weird but doesn't really bother you so you just let him tag along.

There's little reason for Sony to keep pushing the Vita outside of Japan. That said, I doubt they'll discontinue it entirely. It'll just trundle along for a few more years.

As long as it isn't costing Sony money (Which it probably isn't, due to no advertising or 1st-party game development) there's really no reason to kill it completely.