Well, yeah. They should've put way more effort into the Vita post-launch, but honestly with mobile and the 3DS it didn't have too much of a chance outside Japan

"should've"

Personally I think it was a way better move from Sony to ditch the Vita which was bound to not do well regardless of how much Sony supported it (though it of course would've done better) and focus exclusively on the PS4. So I don't really think they "should've".

Perhaps, but due to them ditchign the Vita they've disapointed a lot of western buyers due to the lack of games for the system, and if you lose faith in your customers, its hard to get that back.

Don't misunderstand though, I know there are a lot of Vita fans who are satisfied with the product, I just think it could've been way better if Sony supported it like Nintendo is doing with its failure of a home console.

Further proof that gamers don't understand the market.

I feel inclined to put together my own article now to show how wrong you are.

You keep dismissing opposing viewpoints as if they have no merit while pushing this notion that Sony is not at fault for the magnitude of the Vita's failure because it is entirely the result of mobile gaming. You are wrong for several reasons.

As a huge PSP fan I can honestly say that Sony never supported the Vita as well as the PSP and that was a huge part of the problem. I own over 50 PSP games and I would struggle to name 20 Vita games that I have any interest in. The first party support the Vita received was always inadequate and Sony dropped support far too soon. Also, it launched too late to capitalize on the PSP's success and at far too great of a price. The proprietary memory cards were a huge disaster and probably the biggest contributing factor to the Vita's failure outside of the rise of mobile gaming. I admit that smartphones are possibly the largest contributing factor but to dismiss the impact that the Vita's own shortcomings had is asinine.

If Sony had launched a more modest piece of hardware a full year earlier at a reasonable price with standard memory cards; if they had supported it with their enormous stable of first party studious, allowed homebrew development and advertised it properly they could have moved double or even triple the number of units. I don't understand why you can not accept that Sony's decisions have been a major contributing factor in the Vita's staggering failure.

Also, I have to point out to people that the 3DS's decline in popularity is not entirely the mobile market's fault either as Nintendo totally blew the launch and that system has also failed to live up to its predecessor. I'm a DS fan who still doesn't own a 3DS and smartphones are not a factor in that decision whatsoever.

I know this is going to sound a little crazy but i also think Vita is a little underpowered. Obviously that's not really Sony's fault since Vita was pretty top notch for mobile hardware when it was announced. But the fact is that PSP was much closer to PS2 than Vita is to PS3 power wise. Obviously PS3's cracy Cell cpu doesn't help either. This results in last gen games being less easily ported to Vita. One of the exceptions obviously are the Rayman games, but those run at 1080P/60fps on PS3 so there was more room to downgrade.

Most important thing though would be the fact that if Vita was more on par with a PS3 and more similair in architecture, they could have made you're digitaly PS3 library playable on the go. And a handheld that would have made that possible would have sold very well.

But who knows maybe we will see a handheld version of the PS4 someday, the hardware is more suitable for it.

Let's face it, Sony's first party doesn't sell hardware in the same league as Nintendo's software does. Nintendo still have hugely succesful games on the Wii U, and Nintendo makes most of their money on 1st party software, Sony makes most of their money from 3rd party royalties. No Vita game has sold more than 2 million, and the Vita has got an Uncharted game, which is undoubtedly Sony's biggest current franchise (okay, Gran Turismo might be bigger). In the end, it would've hardly helped the Vita to get some Sony 1st party games that would've flopped and moved little hardware unless 3rd parties decided to make games for it, which simply wouldn't happen.

As for the consumer confidence, eehh, I'd say judging from PS4 sales, that consumer confidence has been impacted relatively little.

Yeah, it seems I have to agree with the points you have made. 

But I feel the Vita's performance will make it difficult for Sony to get back into the handheld market if they ever decide to.

That's a very big if though

Indeed :P