Why the PlayStation Vita underwhelmed
“Advertising and promotion alone will not sustain a bad product or a product that is not right for the times.”
— Akio Morita, Sony Co-founder
Sony's PlayStation home consoles have dominated every console generation they have competed in (save for the PS3, whose weak launch was eventually turned around.) The same cannot be said of handheld consoles, where Nintendo has held the crown since the original Game Boy in the late 1980s. The PSP gave Nintendo their toughest competitor to date, carving out a niche for older, more traditional gamers and those who wanted an all-in-one media device compared to the DS’ innovative design yet casual focus. Despite being out sold by the DS, the PSP performed well enough for Sony to release a successor, the PlayStation Vita, in late 2011.
For several reasons, most of which were Sony's fault, less than one-fifth the number of Vitas sold compared to the PSP. Let's go over what I think are the big 5 reasons, from least to most significant.
Honorary mention: 3G carrier partnership
The early 2010s was the mass smartphone adoption, and mobile service providers were foaming at the mouth to add more and more subscribers to expensive 3G and 4G data plans. Netbooks, tablets, and wifi hotspots were all pushed hard by carriers hoping to activate another SIM or term-length contract.
A model of the PlayStation Vita with 3G connectivity made sense on the surface:
- Online gaming and downloads would be available on the go (where mobile gaming often happens)
- The PSP’s media strengths would be expanded to online streaming and video calling
- Carriers would market and promote the device themselves, increasing visibility
- Subsidized purchase prices lowered the barrier to entry, especially for an (at the time) expensive handheld
But, as mobile carriers discovered when entry level netbooks also didn’t add many $30 data plans: people rarely feel enough need for a dedicated mobile data connection when wifi and mobile hotspots are enough. And among the cases where one would be appreciated, it’s in premium laptops or iPads bought by businesses and specialists.
Gaming is near the bottom of the scenarios where wifi isn’t enough. The premise of always-available online gaming didn’t justify the cost, and still doesn’t today (when was the last time you heard a Switch gamer complain about not being able to play online while on a bus?) Streaming media may have been an even weaker proposition, as who would have signed up for a 3G mobile gaming machine without already having a smartphone which could already play YouTube and Netflix?
Instead Sony wasted time and resources (across all of engineering, marketing, support, and logistics) on the solution to a problem no one was having (…enough to pay the extra monthly bill to a company already overcharging for data plans.) It may have even confused some buyers into thinking the Vita was only available as a 3G device.
The only way a 3G Vita could have worked is if Sony made it a standard feature and handled the billing themselves, hidden to the user. This is how Amazon Kindle’s WhisperNet and GM’s OnStar services work, and Sony could have locked 3G connections behind PlayStation Plus or an additional subscription. But this still would have incurred costs and engineering resources.
Cool idea; didn’t work out. But also didn’t kill the Vita.
Mandatory gimmicks
Two cameras, a touch screen, a rear touch panel, gyroscope and accelerometer were all standard hardware on the Vita, although few titles took advantage of most.
Looking at the Nintendo Switch several years later, it’s clear that cameras and rear touch are not needed for a great gaming experience. The Vita games which used them, usually 1st party titles like Uncharted and Tearaway, were nifty and innovative. But they did not move consoles off shelves and most importantly prevented Sony from releasing cut-down hardware revisions in response to Nintendo’s sharp 3DS price drops.
Like with media streaming, video calling was the domain of the smartphone. Apple released FaceTime over a year before the Vita and removed almost any reason to hold a two-handed games console to call Grandma.
The final damage the gimmicks caused was added complexity when porting a game from the Vita to another platform or form factor, as we saw with the poor game support on the consolized PS TV. Even conspicuously gamepad-only games like Lumines Electronic Symphony required the touch screen only on the main menu, and Tearaway needed significant revamping to be brought to the PS4. This leads us to…
No HDMI out
The PSP had analog video output (from the 2000 revision.) The Switch has a dock with HDMI. But the powerful handheld that existed in between? Nothing.
Unless you count the half-baked last effort that was the PS TV, the Vita was a handheld-only affair. Support for a dock would have excused the proprietary USB cable and made the system more attractive to consumers and developers alike. But it would have required games to work without the gimmicks mentioned above (specifically touch and cameras, as PS3 controllers did feature motion controls.)
Between the 3G data push, gimmicks, and lack of HDMI, a picture begins to be painted.
Mobile versions of games
Up until the Vita, handheld consoles always had to accept significantly downgraded, and usually entirely different, versions of games compared to home consoles. “Ports” of popular PS1 titles to the GameBoy Color were the best example of this. Sega, ever being the exception, did use the Master System as its base for the Game Gear and the Nomad was simply a portable Mega Drive / Genesis, but neither sold particularly well.
The Vita was the first console (since Sega) with the potential to bridge that gap, and entirely failed to do so. It had more available memory than the PS3 and, despite its low clock speeds, a 4-core ARM processor which was sensible and welcoming to developers.
But rather than offer ports of popular PS3 games such as Uncharted, Killzone, or God of War, the Vita had spinoff titles which, despite being fine games, were not “must-plays” or system sellers and even undermined the Vita’s position as offering home console-quality gaming. And while Sony did produce many good spinoff games, such as Uncharted Golden Abyss, many big name 3rd party ones were disappointing enough to harm the Vita’s reputation (looking at you, Black Ops Declassified and Assassin’s Creed Liberation.) Spending several hundred dollars on a system and game(s) only to be met with mediocrity makes any consumer less enthusiastic to invest more into the platform. The launch of the PS4 is also credited as drawing development support away from the Vita, although that should have only increased the burden on Sony to increase 1st and 2nd party development.
What impresses gamers are direct ports, even if they need to cut back on graphics quality significantly. This was the case with Switch ports of The Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal and it was with Borderlands 2 when it released late in the Vita’s lifecycle. Putting a game that would normally be on a TV or monitor onto a portable gets attention and praise. We also saw this with the 2014 iOS release of Bioshock, which happened during the Vita’s lifetime and supported the iPhone 5, which had similar hardware to the Vita (especially its PowerVR graphics cores.) But Bioshock was never released on the Vita…
Proprietary memory cards
The biggest single reason for the Vita’s disappointing sales were the memory cards.
Yes, the PSP also used Sony proprietary* memory cards (Memory Stick Duo.) But there are two differences: first, the PSP depended on these cards far less than the Vita, as online game downloads were less common the mid-00s than the early-mid ‘10s. Games, saves, and DLC were also smaller, so the Memory Stick Duos went further than the entry-level 1 or 2GB Vita cards (or the 1GB built into the “Slim” 2000 model Vita). And Sony certainly did receive backlash for its choice of MS Duo on the PSP, even if the market was still battling over whether SD, MMC, CF, MS, or some other format would win the format war. That format war gave Sony an excuse for pushing their own (nominally-standardized) format instead of the (micro)SD cards we now know are universal, ubiquitous, and affordable.
The second difference was the price. Although (micro)SD was clearly the winner of the flash memory format war by 2011, the Vita pushed forward with the proprietary cards which often cost twice as much per gigabyte as SD cards. Many systems, from the PS1 to the GameCube to the Xbox 360, have used proprietary memory cards for saves and bonus content. But these cards were either inexpensive or had USB alternatives. Sony may have wanted proprietary storage to ensure a baseline level of performance and compatibility, even while Nintendo did not come to same conclusion with the 3DS and Switch. A bizarre reversal of the usual stances by these firms.
How many people looked into buying a Vita and then balked when they saw the added cost of (near-mandatory) memory cards? How many people did buy a Vita but restricted their game purchases due to limited storage space? We’ll never know for sure, but it was plenty. Because Sony was greedy, less Vitas were sold, less developers were paid, and less Vita owners recommended it to their friends.
Predicting the future poorly
What it all boils down to is that Sony misjudged the future of mobile gaming while Nintendo, perhaps with the benefit of seeing Sony’s mistakes, got it right. The Vita tried to combine the media features of a smartphone with best-in-class 3D hardware for gaming. But phones evolved too quickly and neither Sony nor 3rd parties committed enough to console-quality gaming to rebalance the value proposal.
Despite its rocky start and gimmicks of its own, the 3DS handily won out over the Vita for a simple reason: games. Or to be more precise, Nintendo games which always have a dedicated fanbase and meet a level of quality even those of us who dislike Nintendo the company cannot deny. There are a few open questions, though - did Nintendo fans favor the 3DS because of disappointment with the Wii U? And was backwards compatibility with DS games a factor? (The Vita could play PSP games downloaded from the online store, but not PSP discs.)
Nintendo only grew stronger with the Switch, which is on track to be the popular gaming console of all time (depending on console vs mobile vs variants discussion.) The Switch addresses every single weakness of the Vita, from HDMI video out via a dock (excluding the Lite, of course) to standard MicroSD cards to fully-featured versions of many cross-platform titles. It isn’t hard to see how different choices made in Sony’s boardrooms could have allowed the Vita a chance to be more than a niche handheld for fans of indie games and visual novels. It probably could never have been the Switch, but it should have been PSP 2.
Now go buy one
Despite all of these critical points, you should probably buy a PlayStation Vita right now.
With a cheap Vita2SD adapter you can use standard MicroSD cards in the Vita’s game card slot, which when combined with an easy softmod makes for a fantastic device on which to play thousands of games - near-perfect copies of PS1 and PSP games using Sony’s own emulator, indie hits like Va11 Hall-A and Hollow Knight, classic JRPGs like Persona 4 Golden and Final Fantasy X, and hidden gems like Tearaway and Gravity Rush.
As of time of writing, it’s pretty easy to find a used Vita for ~US$100, and prices will likely increase as time passes, so act now! Replacement USB charging cables are still easy to find, and USB-C mods are possible with a little bit of skill. All of the reasons for the Vita’s poor performance matter a lot less after a decade and a discount of a few hundred dollars. So if you’re a fan of Sony systems or of discovering the quirks of different machines, you’re sure to have a great time playing with a Vita. And maybe you, too, will start imagining a world where Sony had a better crystal ball…