The main issue with this reasoning is that is contradictory.

You say that Sony should basically make a PS4 handheld, and yet adopt Nintendo's first party strategy on it?

Realize, there is no distinction between how these companies treat handheld consoles and home consoles.

The Vita in every regard was a PS3 mini, and the problems that plagued the ps3, where excacerbated on the VITA, because of the mobile market's toxicity toward that of the handheld. Like the PC does to (home) consoles, Mobile overlaps with handheld. And while (home) consoles have the price advantage against PCs, handheld (consoles) do not, and price is extremely important.

Its actually funny how identical PC and mobile are. They both have a high entry cost, PC(gaming) can easily be 1k, while smartphones can easily be 600$+, while they both have low cost games. However, most if not all mobiles are subsidized, many are given away for free with deals or on payment plans.

Now tell me, how in the hell are handhelds going to compete against something that is free, plays cheaper games, and can do a whole bunch of extra stuff that the handheld cannot.

How in the hell is Sony or Nintendo going to add features on their platforms, like cameras or web browsers, more ram etc, and still be cheaper than a device that costs $0?

This is why it is so clear as day for me, the only reasonable way to give the handheld market a legitamate chance is to ignore the mobile market, to somehow suggest that mobile has no influence on handheld, arguing that the difference in game quality (which doesn't exist any more) or the use of controllers is enough to entirely seperate the two markets. Despite the fact, that this is virtually identical to the PC vs console debate, where it is ludicrous to suggest that PC has no influence on consoles.

Every single Sony platform, has had strong 3rd party support, with the exception of the Vita. The best they could do is release a lot of old games for the system, but asking for stronger 1st party support from Sony is wishful thinking. There is no way on earth that they are going to spend extra money on VITA 2, while they have PS4, PS NOW, PSVR, and there is no way in hell, they are going to abandon PS4, PS NOW, or PS VR for a VITA 2, into a frankly niche market, just because it "exists".

Nintendo treated the DS, 3DS, Wii, and Wii U all exactly the same. A platform catered to them for their games, but as a result strong 1st party, but weak 3rd party. Look at what happened with Activision on the Wii for instance. The Wii U, now with a prohibitive price, and no third party, suffered and is still suffering in the home console market. 

The 3DS nearly got wiped due to price, and not because of the Vita which it was cheaper than, but because of phones. Nintendo's games and all of its 3rd party, because it has held the handheld market for the beginning of time, barely brought it back from the brink. Normalization my ass.

Well Why don't sony try and adapt to the market then?

Release a steam enabled tablet with PS Now support.

arghhh sony has a share in the blame , but for a sony console to be successful 3rd parties have to hop on
they didnt for the vita and it died simple as that

Price cuts have shown that PSVita' $250 selling price really wasn't the problem.

1) exact same design mentality as the PS3

2) The memory was for anti-piracy, cause you know the PSP was the most pirated console in history, and when you make money of games not units then that is a REALLY BIG FUCKING ISSUE.

Realize, PS4 was the first time Sony did not take a loss on the system.

It didn't matter how expensive the Vita was as long as it sold software, but it turns out it did matter...

But that was after the fact, that public perception of it was basically ruined.

If it had launched much cheaper, it would have probably had more sales early and more developement of games for it => more buyers lateron ect.

It would be a much differnt picture overall, by now.

Remote Play invalidates this. Assume for a minute that this PS4 portable could exist, to beat out remote play, a free app, so it costs 0$, it would at the very least need to store these games on an HDD, which is anywhere from 50-100$ in terms of price to scale so to speak, 500gb to 1tb a very rough estimate. It's already 100$ more expensive than the free app, and we don't even have a screen, gpu, or cpu yet.

$250 is still more expensive than $0. 

The Vita was already a loss leading product. Loss leading products depend on 3rd party support, more buyers are irrelevant if you have to lose more money to get them. And the point of consoles is to make money, not to sell units.

Then they spent to much on the design of it, if it needed to be sold at 250$ to make any profit.

Thats the thing to take away from this, portables cant be sold that expensive and still thrive.

Nintendo where smart, after 5 months of bad sales, they cut the price to 169$.

Regarding the argument that the Vita failed because of a lack of first-party titles, because of the memory cards, or because of a lack of marketing, I honestly could not disagree more.

Sony could have doubled the first-party software production, gone with standard memory cards, and spent millions more on advertising and it would have changed almost nothing. None of those are the reasons why it failed. The simple truth is that they do not have the kind of legacy first-party software franchises that force people into buying a handheld electronic device.

In the current environment, having a Pokemon is everything. It pulls in adults because they played it when they were kids and it pulls in kids because of the nature of the IP.

Sony never developed anything like that on the PSP. Even if they'd tried, it's quite possible that the PSP is too modern for it to really have taken root. Third-parties in the west, of course, have dropped dedicated handheld development, so there is no help from that side.

That's just the way things are now. The general population doesn't even want to buy a 3DS; if Pokemon had been on smart-phones, I bet the average consumer would have happily gone that route, instead.