Nintendo's reward of supporting the WiiU was the Switch. Sony's consequence of abandoning the Vita is having to go back to handhelds with the PS6P to try to compete with the successor of the Switch.

If Sony supported the Vita and made it more successful, Nintendo would have a much harder time capitalizing on the handheld dominance to create the hybrid. But by the time that people realized they still loved dedicated handhelds, the Switch was the only game in town which gave them an instant win. The best reviewed game? BotW? The best selling one? MK8DX. Both WiiU ports.

Yeah in terms of their legacy, it feels like Wii U for all its shortcomings is remembered as the awkward seed that germinated into the phenomenally successful Switch, while the Vita was largely a dead end that was abandoned and left to rot.

This is a very high quality post. 

Weren't Vita sales numbers being reported in unison with the PS2 and PS3? With the "confirmation" that the PS2 sold 160M, has the maximum possible sales of the other two been adjusted down?

For the future of both companies, Wii U led to some better legacy because it was the system Splatoon was first created on, which became a major franchise in Japan, which helped Nintendo take more market share in Japan afterwards. Also, Nintendo in the end got strong profit returns from a lot of games made for the Wii U like Mario Kart 8, BOTW, New Super Mario Bros U and a lot of other Wii U ports to Switch. PS Vita basically left no legacy for Sony and no game made for Vita got ported to a PS home console where it would sell huge numbers. Games made on the Wii U and ported to Switch would end up selling 100-200M copies on Switch, which is an enormous amount.

IIRC the combined sales were PS2+PS3, and PSP+PS Vita. But yeah, those 13.13M from VGChartz, are calculated from that 500M combined number from 2018 I think, so that PS2 is 160.01M and the Vita is what lefts .. which is 13.13M.

I think that one of the Wii U games getting an enhanced version that has sold over 70 million is big enough of a deal on its own to give it to that.

The Vita has been adjusted down. Before it was nearly 16m on here.

WiiU, even though I think the Vita hardware was phenomenal at the time.

WiiU had the better exclusives and Mario Kart 8 the GOAT. I hated the hardware with a passion but there's no denying it had some great games.

Vita did have some highlights, I thought it's launch window line-up was awesome, gravity rush IP and popularised the Persona Series.

Mental that the best selling Persona before the Vita was only a bit over 0.5m (P4 on PS2) yet Golden comes along and sells over 1.5m on the Vita of all systems. Vita might have helped Persona 5 secure a higher budget and create my favourite JRPG of all time.

Wii U was a dedicated home console and the Vita was a dedicated handheld, so they weren't competing. For the Wii U, its competition was the PS4 and Xbone. For the Vita, it was 3DS. The former got its backside handed to it (although I loved mine and easily had the most fun with it out of the three), and the latter as well. So in that context, both were commercial failures.

Wii U, their games sold well on Switch so it wasn't a total waste of time