I said Sony wanted to beat Nintendo and didn't so they likely changed the branding. You said that it wasn't about beating Nintendo but making money. I proved that (as well as making money) it was about beating Nintendo. Then you said it sold 80 million units and was successful, asking me what my "logic is"... which makes no sense in the context of the discussion. 

For the same reason Wii 2 was named Wii U. Sometimes companies just don't think.

people don't undestand that the average person doesn't know all of this, only hear about whatever games is advertised on tv and expect stuff to be well organized. they associated with crap, ofcourse car companies don't change model names year after year. goes for like everything 

Perhaps it has to do with the vision Sony seemed to have for it - with games that are goofy, AR, reality based, applications like Near, and 3G hardware, they wanted it to be something of an element of daily life, something social, lively.

It ended up goofy in an entirely different way, sadly

Vita means life.

I think it has to do with the Numbering i remember when microsoft was asked why they choose Xbox 360 over calling it xbox 2.. their response was, it is the general consumer who are not into gaming and want to purchase a console for their kid.. so on the shelf they see a playstation 3 and xbox 2 , so they automatically assume that higher number is better. Honestly this reason make sense, So I think it was same with vita as it came along side 3DS which was bascially DS2, so i guess they had the same fear as MS, but at the end of the day it back fired in a big way.

Nah, the naming wasn't the reason fro the failure of the WiiU.

To me it looks like initially Sony wanted the Vita to be something more than just a traditional handheld console. They wanted to be it some multimedia portable device where you can play games, surf the web, use it for some apps, listen to music, watch videos , etc. So in my opinion they wanted to distance it from PSP brand which was associated with gaming first. In the end they failed so bad with it because it was initially stupid trying to step on iPhone territory with gaming device which capabilities are always limited because of it’s price.

Id have prefered that.
I think sony should always keep it as simple as possible.

PSP = playstation portable = makes sense.
their 2nd handheld should have been PSP2, their 3rd a PSP3 ect.

They do this with the Playstation too, ps1,2,3,4,5 ect.

KISS (keep it simple stupid)

it always bothered me about MS and Nintendo, you should always stick to easy to understand concepts for consumers imo.

Xbox (the first) =>
Xbox 360 (2nd) =>
xbox One (because f*** logic)

NES (makes sense) =>
SNES (super okay, a better version of a nes) =>
N64 (64bit right? nameing products based on feathres okay) =>
Gamecube (erhm, I guess its cube like sticking with the features part in name) =>
Wii  (okay wtf is a wii? how does this fit with the name = feature of the device)
Wii U (now theres a follow up to the wii, but the design of the controller is radically differnt, why does it still carry the wii part?) =>
Switch (okay they returned to semi-logics with a name based on a feature)

^ if Nintendo stick with this way of nameing things, the next Nintendo system wont be called Switch 2, but something like SUPER SWITCH! SWITCH EXTRA!

The PSP was considered a half failure. They wanted to distance themselves from the console (the PSP) and so opted for a new name.