ehm what? sony doesnt make money from software, they make money from 3rd party game sales, and you have to sell alot more hardware for a decent 3rd party profit than for a 1st party software strategie(aka nintendo).

and piracy is such a joke argument, there arent any studies(not payed by publishers) that suggest that piracy ever hurted game sales.

The history of handhelds has been one of Nintendo dominance.

Sony managed the impressive with the PSP in having a second place success thanks to a time in which gaming boomed. The bust period came with mobile as seen by even Nintendo's massive drop in sales. Right now many of us are speculating that Nintendo will not have a natural successor to the 3DS and go some hybrid direction as need to consolidate resources behind single product. Sony decided to focus on the PS4 and ride out third party support (which is 99% Japanese) to keep the Vita alive.

Now, I love my Vita. I think it is a wonderful device with a brilliant library. Going on sales data I am obviously in a small minority in the west. I don't think there is anything that could have given the system PSP or even 3DS level of sales that would have seen Sony turn a profit.

Lack of support killed Vita

3DS might have sold 50M but DS sold over 150M,.. a target 3DS won't get close too. the dedicated handheld market is going under massive contraction this gen and vita only accounts for a bit over half of the contraction.

sony didn't help but let's be honest,.. they saw early in vita's lifecycle that vita was going to fail. instead of putting millions into the system to try and keep it afloat they decided to cut their loss early and divert those millions to ensuring the ps4 didn't also fail. it was smartest thing sony could do at the time even if it sux for vita owners.

Sony made a lot of mistakes with the Vita, mistakes it could have recovered from without the big changes brought on by mobile gaming. So yes Sony is to blame for Vita's failure but mobile gaming played its part too... now you could always say Sony should have seen it coming and should have adapted its product accordingly but let's leave it at that.

Best selling games are consoles like games so how can people say Vita failed because of that,uniques games like tearaway didn't sell that well
Indies games was never a system majority of peoples won't say i bough a Vita or a PS4 or any consoles because of terraria for exemple
Backward compability is not a big system sellers too

The Vita's lack of success is the result of a few major factors happening at the same time:

1. The rise of mobile. Nobody can deny that handheld gaming has experienced a shift in the last 4-5 years. And this shift works against traditional handhelds like gameboys, DS's, PSPs, and Vitas. Dedicated handheld gaming systems can't compete in the casual space anymore. Phones and tablets offer free, fremium, and cheap solutions for that audience. So dedicated handhelds need to be able to cater to the more "hardcore" gamer.

2. And that's where Sony dropped the ball. At the beginning, yeah, it looked like we'd get some great PS2.5 type experiences. But that ended pretty quickly when Sony decreased support. And what little third party support also dwindled. Over time, the system slowly devolved into cross-play titles, ports, and smaller indie type games. Which is fine. But the list of exclusive games on the PS Vita is a relatively small one (with the bigger budget games making a tiny portion of that). And a good chunk of those are Japan-only.

3. Nintendo dominance.

I absolutely love my Vita. I got it at launch and I definitely don't regret it. But other than the 3-4 exclusives I have for it, it's mainly used as a remote play, PSX, PSP, cross-play, and indie game machine. Which is a far cry from the expectations the system had before launch.

Nintendo was better insulated against the rise of smartphones/tablets at least initially, because as of really 2013, it wasn't easy to get a budget tablet and phones are contract devices so most kids don't have those.

The iPad was for its first couple of years a luxury device out of reach of kids and there weren't a ton of tablet knock offs, but by 2013 cheap Android tablets started to flood the market. 

Today even kids are getting their own tablet because they're actually cheaper or the same price as the 3DS.

Think of smartphone/tablets as an earthquake + tsunami ... Sony was closer to the epicenter of the earthquake and thus got rocked more immediately, but Nintendo also got hit later.

Mobile first invaded the adult market then quickly after the teen market, now it's reaching the kids market too, so Sony which targets more of the teenager/college age audience was naturally rocked the hardest first. 

Not at fault?  What are you talking about?  I said the Vita was a failure from the start and you're saying that I said Sony has no fault?  Does that even make sense to you?

Seriously, your "triple the units" theory is nothing but head-in-the-sand bullshit from someone who clearly does not understand that the market has changed to a massive degree.  THE AVERAGE ADULT IS NOT GOING TO BUY A DEDICATED HANDHELD GAMING SYSTEM.  The interest is NOT THERE.  It is no longer a necessary device.  Most adults can play games on a device THEY ALREADY OWN.  Nintendo is getting around that ONLY because they have legacy software what was PREVIOUSLY a massive hit, giving it instant brand recognition with millions of people.  What does Sony have to counter that in the handheld space?  New IPs will do nothing.  The failure of the Vita is directly linked to the failures of the PSP.

The Vita was never going to be a hit.  

Tell me what these games are that would have made the system triple its sales?  What does Sony have that would have pushed those kinds of numbers?  I'd love to know and I bet Sony would, as well.

Will you be saying the same thing about nintendo once their next console sells near vita numbers.. Handhelds are dying because of mobile end of story. Sony did try. Lots of titles published by them have seen lots of praise on there killzone is a damn fun and incredibly looking title, gravity rush and tear away is some of the greatest handheld titles ever, and one of my all time favourites, sound shapes is way better on the vita than on ps3