Hand held systems over past 25 years outside of Nintendo offerings have struggled. I remember the Game Gear, Lynx, N-Gage, etc. all being seen as failures.
The biggest thing is having 1-3 massive games that really move systems. As much as I love my Vita and its library, the majority of games appeal to the same niche group. Hand held gaming over all was pretty much dead in the mid 90s, and then Pokemon happened and suddenly people were fine dusting off old systems to play a game in late the 90s that looked like an NES title.

I remember having this discussion before when I joined earlier x ) My reasons were the console was too expensive, it was lacking particular games to take off, and the limited their target audience too much. I think I still think about the same, overall.

They aimed at having a Hi end hand held that would be expensive to develop for, at the same time that smart phones with their $5 were exploding, they added the proprietary SD cards that are SUPER expensive to tried to trap the buyers and that just put people off. Is does not have an app store, and is not as multimedia capable as a smart phone.
Smart phone are subsidized by phone companies so there is no way it can compete value wise.

walsufnir said: Lawlight said: walsufnir said: Lawlight said: Because handhelds are dead.   29,271 33,168 48,300 117,887 Because handhelds are dead everywhere except Japan. Fixed it.   It sold more in the west than in Japan. Pos Platform North America Europe Japan Rest of World Global 11 Nintendo 3DS (3DS) 17.03 14.60 19.13 3.36 54.12

Are you seriously going to continue to try to play this off? The 3DS is going to sell less than half of what the DS did and the Vita would be lucky to sell 1/4th what the PSP did. You will see a similar cut next gen, handhelds are not totally dead but they are on their last leg

-decline of handhelds
-marketing

There were and still are many great ads for the 3ds that showed off third party (street fighter and monster hunter) and first party (mario kart 7, ocarina of time, starfox, pokemon)

I have never seen a vita ad

Sony wanted to create a handheld for AAA games to offer something that you couldn't find 3DS or mobile devices. But the audience for AAA games rather plays them on console or PC. The initial idea behind the Vita failed, but it got interesting for different audiences thanks to good Japanese third-party support. Most of those games are catering to a certain niche and are not appealing to the masses, especially not in the West.

Well, and all of the other reasons, too.

everything is expensive, that's all...

The fact Sony itself stopped supporting the damn thing

I don't quite understand it, either. Yeah, the memory cards are ridiculous and the 1st party support is lacking, but there are still a ton of great games on it and you can't find a nicer piece of tech to play games on.

Such a shame. It could've been a great boost for Sony. Not sure why gamers ignored it so badly.

I wanna know why 95% of consumers (and 99% of retailers) still don't understand that 2DS plays 3DS games.

As for the Vita. I think the bigger problem than the price of memory cards is the poor distribution of game cartridges.