Sony’s PS Vita hasn’t managed to reach huge success, but has drifted along in its almost four year existence. It has faced competition from both Nintendo’s 3DS range and the continuous rise of mobile gaming. In fact the latter may be the reason a Vita successor may not ever happen, and Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida discussed that possibility during a Q&A session at EGX.
People have mobile phones and it’s so easy to play games on smartphones. And many games on smartphones are free, or free to start. I myself am a huge fan of PlayStation Vita and we worked really hard on designing every aspect. Touch-based games are fun – there are many games with really good design. But having sticks and buttons make things totally different.
So I hope, like many of you, that this culture of playing portable games continues but the climate is not healthy for now because of the huge dominance of mobile gaming.
The slow sales are also why Sony decided early on to make Gravity Rush 2 a PS4 game instead of a Vita title. Earlier this week Shu commented on that too.
As for Gravity Rush 2, Sony made the decision “very early” to make it a PS4 exclusive. This is largely because it’s an open-world game and “the vision has really large potential in terms of realizing higher performance.
The team did a really good job to create an open-world game with the first Gravity Rush on a portable, but when we’re able to show more about what Gravity Rush 2, I’m sure people will totally understand why we made it PS4 only.
Source: Eurogamer/PlayStation LifeStyle
psychobudgie
The issue for me with the Vita was it’s absolute lack of third party media apps like Netflix, which meant I had to take a tablet or use my phone when I travelled which in turn inclined me to just use the tablet or indeed my Phone for other things. I then found myself using the Vita less and less as a result until I wondered what the point of it was and got a better tablet instead. Sony are so far up themselves at times when it comes to selling their own inferior services to people and seem to believe that they can beat Apple at being Apple when they can’t even beat Sony at being Sony. It’s failure was their own doing. Just look at the PSTV for a shining example of a poorly thought out, self indulgent sorry excuse for a media box. It supports virtually nothing and likely never will.