PS Vita: How NOT to Save a Console
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
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Most people you talk to about the PlayStation Vita will sing its praises. It’s often referred to as a system that was way ahead of its time, with its console-quality graphics and wide array of features. With so much love for it, you would probably assume the Vita was a big success. But of course, that was not the case, with the PS Vita being PlayStation’s biggest failure ever. So what happened? How can a system that is almost universally beloved by everyone who played it, sell so poorly? In today’s video we will look back at the story of the PS Vita to find out how NOT to save a console.
God it still pisses me off how sony treated the vita... feels like they didnt even try with how fast it "died". Also vita is a very ironic name now thanks to this.
GOD I MISS MODNATION RACERS
Angers me to till this day. How do you just fumble some technology like that. So impressive for it's time
Imo i think it all came down the the price, the price of the vita and the storage was too expensive for 2011, Imo simple as that
@@rinnnnnnnnnnrin while ps portal is doing much better. Explain that?
You say in the end "I am sure if the vita was released today, Sony would have done a few things differently. Having the PS portal in the back of my mind, makes me think Sony still doesn't get the appeal of portable gaming
I think the Portal was Sony’s way of testing the portable market to see how players would respond.
The Portal is currently performing very well, so we’ll have to wait and see what they do with that info going forward
@@marvelmania7283 Sony's marketing was completely misguided. Focusing on making a handheld that does everything a smartphone does - including not playing PSP - pushed away even their die hard fans.
@@ZackLillipad is it performing very well? I literally know no one who has one. I haven't even seen a unit in person.
@@ZackLillipad I doubt it. Sony already has difficulty supporting PlayStation 5, entering the portable console market means competing against Nintendo, unlike 20 years ago Nintendo no longer makes weak portables and considering that Sony relies heavily on third party support, it will be a worse version of the Nintendo portable consoles.
@marvelmania7283 Admittedly I also don’t know anyone who has it but it’s consistently at the top of the sales charts for gaming accessories. And Sony said fairly recently that demand for the Portal far exceeded their expectations.
The unique memory cards wore too expensive from what i heard, sure make them proprietary but on the same price range of a sandisc.
I bet the memory cards were priced so ridiculously high to specifically hedge their bets and cover any losses from inevitable piracy -they acted as both a hardware level AND financial mitigation. Even if you decide to pirate games, you still need a medium to store the backups on. Note: I absolutely condone piracy ;)
Possibly, but it did more harm than good for them. If they were priced better but still proprietary their mileage with the VITA would've been a bit longer.
Concord luckily is now their biggest software/ hardware failure. japan studios games probably sold better than this
Yeah, what an epic fail. 8 years of development and millions down the sh!tter.
When that handheld came out, I was "living the "VITA" loca"
I think one of the main reasons the 3DS killed the Vita is the fact that it's just an upgraded DS so people could bring their whole library with them where the Vita moved from the disks to cartridges so we couldn't play our psp games on the Vita
but u could still download psp games on the Psstore
@mrtitanspeakerman this is true but at that time most of us had a decent physical library that we couldn't do anything with unless you kept your psp where with the 3DS we didn't have that problem
@@Rojo-Infernoyea and also the price
@@mrretrogamesguy only a fraction of the PSP's library was available
@@ericp631you could still copy over and play over any PSP games you bought digitally even if they weren’t on the vita store thanks to the integrated PSP hardware.
PS Vita: A Wasted Potential By Sony
While ps portal is selling like hotcakes. Explain that?
@@EnaTenkiyoGamerI completely forgot about the portal. 😂
@@armando_az1 😂
I got a PSTV and bought my older brother a Vita 1000 within the past six months. I would honestly say it’s in my top 3 favorite consoles with the exclusives and other games you can’t find on PS5 but are still listed on PS4. Modding it even unlocks it potential even more and it’s something to take advantage of especially with a PSTV.
It kind of blew most games sucked. If it vould play ps3 games yes ot woulf b good
I love my Vita and invested in so many games good and bad. I’m playing Monster Hunter frontier and it’s been a blast. I haven’t finished Killzone mercenary and there’s a guy trying to bring its multiplayer back 👏🏾.
Honestly SONY shud have gotten rid of the useless shovelwares, trackpad, AR, Gyro and camera in favour of better specs, battery, built in storage and L2, R2, L3, R3 buttons
Also, instead of having a useless 3G model, they should have just included a LCD version as the starter and OLED version as the definitive console.
Till now, many of my friends didn't even know that the psp had a successor and so not calling it the psp 2, made SONY dropped the ball hard.
Finally, the games are thrash. Resistance flopped. Unit 13 is boring and had a hellish input lag. Cod declassified sucked so hard and yet it was the best selling ps vita game. The only great flagship games were killzone, uncharted and Little Big Planet. Monster hunter didnt return to PS Vita and some of the best selling psp games did not return either. There were no GTA or even GOW games other than ports of the previous generations. The only thing great about the ps vita now are its mods and homebrew. But now with the steamdeck, there is no reason to own a Vita anymore.
Perfectly proved that graphics don't sell a console, even if you throw in the kitchen sink.
There's a reason why they no longer supported the PlayStation Vita. It costs too much to make an exclusive game on PlayStation Vita, as you said before many PlayStation Vita games are Spinoffs and collections, if they were to make a high quality exclusive game on PlayStation Vita it would cost them as much as a PlayStation 3 game, which was crazy in 2012.
Also Nintendo had problems supporting 2 consoles around in the Wii U era, that's why they unified the teams and made 1 console instead of 2.
Playstation portal is better 😂
Playstation portal says hi
@@EnaTenkiyoGamer I didn't get anything, maybe the ps portal lost its wifi connection. 🤣
@@guilhermegoldman hahaha Nintendo switch fanboy crying over the playstation portal 🤣
@@EnaTenkiyoGamer Nintendo left my country after the Wii bc we like piracy a bit too much. Lol
Wouldn't matter anyway since it wouldn't fit in my uniform and I do most of my gaming while away from home. For now I'm sticking to my 3ds and Vita.
The marketing was also very poor. I bought a PS Vita in very early 2014. None of my co-workers at the movie theater knew what it was when I played it in the break room, but they knew what a 3DS was. To this day, your average joe still doesn't know what a PS Vita is.
I rememeber going to Best Buy to buy one but then I saw the prices for the memory cards, it was some stupid amount like 70$. This was pre covid dollars too so thats like 180$ today, for a memory card.
I’d love to hear you talk about the PSP and the piracy issue!
Sony didn't realise how to support 2 consoles at once ? Really ? This is not the problem cuz this isn't true, they supported not 2 but even 3 consoles at once - PSP, PS2 and PS3 for couple of years. They also supported PS1 and PS2 at the same time. They supported PS3 and PS4 for a few years too, and of course PS4 and PS5. So you are wrong here.
I used to own a PSVITA, though I traded it for a Nintendo Switch. Personally I think Sony could have gone far with the Vita if they had put more effort into it, though instead they decided to ditch it to focus more on both the PS3 and PS4 , which is a shame because the Vita was a awesome handheld with alot of potential.
It would have been great if you mentioned why Nintendo beat out the Vita in more depth. I believe the issue as you mention with mobile phone advancement is that unlike Nintendo the other offerings lacked a specific winning formula for a handheld gaming device in order to separate itself from home consoles.
Please do one on the Wii U, because it's eerily similar to this
Stay tuned 🫡
Sadly, what kept me off the Vita was the memory card small sizes and price.
You'd think they'd have learned from the abysmal PS3 launch with it's $500+ price tag for 20 - 60GB, but Sony and learning from mistakes go together like Milk and a Soda Stream.
Not that it matters, they could do anything and people will give them a free pass.
There was an article back in 2011 where they asked Kazurai about how Sony will be able to combat the loss they will be having with every Vita sold. I believe he answered that they had a plan for that. And we all know what it was now: those overpriced memory cards.
For me, when they stopped releasing first party games and referring to it as a remote play device and place for indies, i just gave up.
I liked the device prior to the direction change but with no decent new games released after killzone mercenary, i didn't but anything else
I also think Sonys direction now of releasing on PC is going to kill their console business long term in exchange for short term profits.
Even if they launch a portable ps5. The fact that they launch exclusives on pc now means it isn't really a big selling point
As someone who owns 4 PS Vita's, i still love them so much, and i feel it's hard for it to die, but i love the way you mentioned its history, and how things didn't work out because of those many reasons!, keep releasing such great videos! and thanks!
Thanks for watching!!
The plural is ps Vitae. Lol
@@guilhermegoldmanfor real hey?
@@iBMcFly Sony just had to name it something worst than 3ds. 😅
@@guilhermegoldman I think both systems have decent names.
Entries from Ratchet and Clank, God of War, GTA, Metal Gear Solid or even Infamous series would've pushed the Vita very well. I listed those games because a majority of those titles help push the PSP. A more accesssible and affordable memory option would've worked as well, since consumers had issues with how expensive the proprietary memory card options were.
Excellent vid! The Playstation Portal might be saved now that you can connect to public wifis and mobile hotspots, maybe a vid about that?
I think what killed Vita was the propriety card which was at that time really expensive, while Nintendo was using the standard microSD for their console. From there it was a domino effect, expensive propriety card led to poor sales, and poor sales led to poor developer's support hence the limited library of games. If developers would support a console, of course to the one which will sell more. It was too late when microSD with adapter was used in Vita.
Sorry but how tf do you have 2.35k subs, this content is fantastic and well made, you deserve way more.
Great vid man I love these types of videos! Maybe a video on current gen gaming? It’s not dead but it kinda feels that way
I used my vita quite a bit back when it was new. Though when my 64 gb memory card randomly got corrupted I stopped using it. If only sony didn't have the priotery memory I would have seen this console in a better light and I know the unoffical means with the sd2vita but it sucks that there had to be a work around at all.
I loved the vita, however I hated the proprietary memory cards they used. In a world where SD cards were becoming mainstream, it would've made more since for the future of the console to allow it, even if they were small in size at the time. I caught myself having to delete and reinstall games all the time and with only having the 1001 model and only being 13 when I got mine, I couldn't afford to do that every time due to the lack of wifi. I still have the one I got in 2013, replaced the battery with a new one from iFixit, gave it a 256gb sd card, and homebrewed the he- out of it. Needless to say, that was the best mod that I could do for it.
Contrary to popular belief, I think the Vita failed because its Western library was lackluster.
The PSP got its own God of War games, Grand Theft Auto’s, Monster Hunters, Metal Gear Solid’s, the list goes on; some titles on par or even better than the home console games.
The Vita got…Uncharted and WipeOut I guess? And a terrible CoD, a poorly optimized Borderlands 2 port, and other games I’d rather just play on PS3. The PSP had similar issues but not quite as bad.
PlayStation handhelds have never really felt like must-own systems, rather just cool niche things in the moment. Unlike Nintendo handhelds where they’ll put the next mainline entry in their Pokémon or Mario Kart series, the PS handhelds always got spin-offs that didn’t matter. The only PS handheld game I can think of that is a mainline entry in its series is MGS Peace Walker (which if you ask me, should’ve been delayed, called “MGS5,” and been a PS3/Vita Crossplay title.)
I miss my Vita..
Such a small channel with very high quality videos!
🫡🫡
They tried to save Vita by making Vita TV to expand its user base.... except they forgot to adapt any games to the lack of a touchpad, or adapt apps like Netflix. So you had a gaming-oriented TV setup box that had no games or streaming capability.
Great video!!!
I think I might just go play Vita now??
I lost my original slam that I bought in 2014 ... where I had all the good games physical copies!
Now I have three Vitas! Two that are hacked and one that is not..
My favorite handheld ever
Commenting before watching the whole thing.
I recently got a region free Vita from Japan, and I absolutely love it. The problem I'm having is with the proprietary memory card. Why does Sony do this? It's so hard to get a memcard. They could have just slapped a standard Micro SD and called it a day.
Not ever.. the PSVR 2 is the biggest failure
Psvr 2 is not a console
I don’t think mobile gaming played a part, just look how successful the 3DS was in that time and even that had a rough start.
I think if Sony kept it simple and named it PSP 2, allowed people to use any micro SD card and kept the price reasonable at launch, it would have attracted a lot more customers than it initially did. A lot of people will forever dismiss a product if they don’t like it during the announcement, regardless of if it gets better over time. Also, the launch titles were decent, a lot better than what the 3DS had. If they then continued to release strong titles like a sequel to psp ratchet and clank, god of war etc then people would have continued to buy it.
If I were the boss of Sony at the time, I would’ve treated the Vita a LOT better!
Here’s how I would’ve handled it:
- no rear touch pad
- games would’ve come on Blu Ray based Super UMDs, which’d be higher capacity than the PSP’s DVD-based UMDs
- a stronger 1st party lineup, including a new Locoroco game, a new version of the Talkman language app and more
- a 4G model of the system introduced later in the system’s life
- if EA still drop Vita support shortly into the handheld’s life, I’d fill the sports game void with new World Tour Soccer, Total NBA and GameDay games! (The latter would have CFL teams due to EA’s exclusive deal with the NFL) They’d also come with a No Loot Box guarantee!
And it still would have tanked.
-The UMD drive was the most vulnerable part of the PSP, easily broken or made non-functional. Its motor and laser assembly drained the battery much faster than reading from the Memory Stick PRO Duo(TM), and once the system was jailbroken ripping discs to ISO images became child's play. It's the single biggest contributor to the PSP's piracy problem and moving to solid state game cards was the right call.
-A stronger first-party lineup should have been a priority from day one, but consider this: The Vita and PS4 were the beginning of Sony's problem of overspending on individual AAA games, which has become downright ridiculous. Spider-Man 2 cost something like $315 million and had to move 7 million units _just to break even._ They abandoned the SS Vita because their investments hadn't resulted in the sales of a sufficient number of consoles for the platform to reach critical mass. What Sony really should have done with Vita was to take a page each from Nintendo and the independant scene. Fewer expensive AAA movies you occasionally get to play, more pick-up-and-play bursts of entertainment. Lots more!
-Along with that stronger lineup of less expensive games, Sony's marketing department should have gotten their asses out of bed and actually promoted the damned thing AND its software, first _and_ third party. Even if that meant acknowledging that the thing wasn't exactly the cutting edge of graphical fidelity or immersive experiences. Even if it meant leaning into the console's strongest selling point later in its lifespan: its catalog of JRPGs and niche anime games.
-3G was a joke and it shouldn't have been included in the first place. It was a pointless gimmick that needlessly increased the R&D budget for absolutely no payoff. Have you ever tried to play, say, Rocket League over a cellular connection? It's hell on Earth. Even at its best, you just wind up wishing you had real Wi-Fi and abandoning cellular the moment you're back in range of your router. Upgrading from shit to crap would have helped nothing.
-The Switch ended the pattern of a withdrawal of support from EA meaning a console is doomed, thank the gods. Platforms live and die based on the strength of their own libraries, not the contributions of a single publisher, no matter how huge and monolithic. The entire industry would be better off if EA imploded.
-Really? You wouldn't have just used microSD cards? Sony could have absolutely used cheap memory cards and still hardened them against piracy with an encrypted file system. The PSP and Vita homebrew scenes were full of really smart people who absolutely would have defeated the console's security measures anyway; Those damned memory cards were just Sony getting high on their own supply, _again._ Cheap and plentiful storage would have scared off fewer users, and it would have made it so I could actually use my Vita's cartridge slot instead of an SD2Vita adapter.
At the end of the day, Sony didn't fight to save the Vita because they didn't have to. SCE's bread and butter is AAA, singleplayer blockbusters you play after plopping your ass on the couch. If PS4 was as shaky out of the gate as the Wii U, things might have turned out differently, but that's not what happened. Nintendo HAD TO fight to pull the 3DS' head above water. It was the only way to keep the whole ship afloat while they dipped into their war chest to develop a console the public actually wanted.. and the Switch was everything the Wii U AND the Vita should have been.
Sony is all about the profit margins. That's what got them this far. They aren't going to invests millions leading up to a layoff when their consoles are doing well. It's a recipe for bankruptcy if they do lol
PS Portal is selling well though so there's that 😂
I didn’t like UMD’s the catties break and then you have to buy new ones. Also iirc, some umd versions of games had features removed. UMD’s are cool but they’re not very practical imo. Rear touchpad can stay, it’s a decent substitute for L2 and R2 once you actually get used to it. Other than that, I agree with this.
- I used to agree about the rear touchpad, but full trigger buttons would stick out too much and hurt the Vita’s portability.
- UMD’s were a mistake that should never have existed. The disc drives took up way too much battery life, and loading times were painfully slow. If anything, the PSP should’ve used cartridges.
- For launch lineup, the Vita should’ve been on par with the PSP by having its own God of War and GTA from day one.
- Cellular data for Vita was a mistake. A cool concept at first, but not worth it. Shouldn’t have been attempted at all.
@morsecode980
New 3DS and Switch Lite have 4 shoulder buttons and don't affect the portability.
Still have my vita I like it
same here!
Is anyone else still getting a bunch of hours out of their vita😂
@@IceyDio mostly remoteplay and PSP "emulation".
I still have mine with so many game loaded on it.
Great vid bro . We need a Wii U ,Jaguar , 3DO and Amiga CD ones now 😂👍🏼
If only there was a Tekken game on Vita
Playstation portal is better 😂😂😂
It sucks to live in a reality where the psvita flopped miserably, yet the ps portal didnt...
I always sad when watching this kind of video about ps vita 😢
I think it's so ironic that one of my favorite consoles of all time, is the worst selling console that the developer ever put out?!
Ironic
Also the PS Vita didn't have Kevin Butler if I remember correctly.
They can make a Vita 2, increase its power by 20%, get rid of the back touchpad and release it today and it would do well. Problem is the PS5 isn't doing well so they can't afford to fail like that.
PS5's doing _okay._ It's the economics of AAA game production and Sony/MS dropping new consoles during a global pandemic that torpedoed this generation of consoles. I bet some fun new games that aren't gonna also release on PS4 would really help, though!
Not the touchpad! I hate having to click with the joysticks. 😓
Ps portal is here to stay
@@EnaTenkiyoGamer it would be tragic if they didn't give their next handheld remote play just to keep the portal around.
@guilhermegoldman sony isn't making a ps vita 2. Get over it. We need to move on
It's in the library. Barely any killer games that could rival Pokemon, Smash, or Mario on the 3ds. Having 3G had next to no bearing because the 3ds didn't even have that. It's either a plus or a non-factor. Touchscreen? The 3ds also had that, so it wasn't even part of the problem.
I know why I sold my one in first year STORAGE!!!!!
It sucks I got into the vita way late in the lifetime I wish the servers were still up for killzone and unit 13
It was so funny that they made ModNation Racers instead of a port of the extremely more obvious LittleBigPlanet Racers
I have a vita thats been sitting in a drawer since a year after launch. I would take it out once in awhile after that first year but never much and would forget i even owned it at times.
I bought several of the launch games and the last big game i bought was borderlands even though i had it on a home console. The big games were so few and far between at times and a lot of the were just half baked (blackops declassified was just a reskin of another mediocre game!)
It was just a huge disappointment for me. I was a flight attendant at the time so it was a perfect "almost console" to use at work but never had enough AAA first party or big third party games after launch.
Its just a sad follow up to the PSP and was kinda forgotten about by Sony and most third party devs.
Wrong time to release a handheld for Sony
I love the Vita. I still have my Slim and it is amazing.
I wanted to love the vita but man it was no where near the psp.
no Final fantasy, kingdom hearts, ratchet and clank
that horrible back touch pad
Wowzerz! Enjoyed this subbed and liked 👍
i had 3g model launch vita.. used it for skype calling, it was nice..
PSvita. $200. The biggest memory card. $180. You can see why it failed.
Waiting on my vita to arrive.
I really want to get a 1100 model, (or regular FAT), but them consoles are too expensive... 😅 Nearly selling for the dropped price, 200$...
The vita was a great product but the market shifting towards phone games made it inviable. End of the story. There was no way to save it. It wasnt sony’s fault
I am not a hard core gamer. But I have 3 oled and 2 2000 model and recently got a ps tv never even tried if its working. I have a. Ps4 but my regular play station is the ps3 super slim(i have 2). The games are dirt cheap even ps4 games now a days. Tried modded consoles but not my cup of tea. My ps4 pro is as loud as an airplane but I have to admit the resolution is way better but I am retro gamer with 50 consoles.
we failed with the vita
Great vid!
Underrated video
I felt so burnt after the psvita I'll never buy another PS portable device and why should anybody when you can get a portable gaming pc. The vita was done, but the back touchscreen was a stupid concept. The camera was abysmal even for its era imagine hope much cheaper a vita could of been with out the stupid back touch and the terrible cameras
Nah, the rear camera wasn't bad for 2011, ipod and iphones at the time were similar in quality. I don't see the point in having those cameras though. Sony was trying too hard to cater to the mobile crowd. I will also agree the back touchpad was a dumb gimmick that was hardly used.
The vita was something I wanted to love, but just didn't. For something that checked off so many of the boxes of things I like/wanted, but it just not clicking, it feels weird. It's a great console in a vacuum, but it was exposed (at least for me) by other consoles past and present existing. It's hard to get excited about games you've already played or exist in improved and cheaper forms on other systems you own.
PS Portal says hi
Vita video.... Yes please.
I've owned 3 OLEDs and 2 slims and I sold them all
How much did u get for them?
definately didnt try.. crazy how they spoke highly etc but 2012 and 2013 was so sparse and dull and lackluster and kept trying things and bunch of times barely anything for a month every other money and at one point like a few months smh. I kept hoping things to get better and end of 2013 it showed promise and into early 2014 and then nothing, complete obscurity ever since.
At launch.... if it had micro sd, micro usb cable charging, 1-2hr extra battery, more games maybe 10+ high quality titles in first year or two, lower price, and being more open to ports and mobile stuff to coincide with phone games, and 5.5in screen (phones already had 4.7-5in (so it could have an edge in size). perhaps it would have done better. It missed the mark on many things. It really sucks. I also thought mini blu ray discs akin to the psp games, with a case enclosure would have been a smart idea, especially for backwards compatibility but nope. I always envisioned that for vita. Mini blu rays... would probably hold like 10-25gb easy by that time. And probably cheaper that flash carts still right? Instead they gave flash carts with about 4gb capacity for 99% of games. That was the limit. Barely any game goes over that. And they began the now common, download dlc and other half the game etc separately to your expensive memory card.
I do hope they make one more handheld. The market has come back. Especially with giant steamdeck things and the switch. At the bare minimum give us that, even if the games are run at lower settings. Id be fine with an official sony portable psp3, 720p LCD if need be, cheap handheld. 30-40fps is fine. And Similar thought as to the PS Portal for size and all that. Even these lower specs but running ps4 (have to be able to do ps4 and its huge library) but also ps5 games would be sooo dope. Imagine playing gran turismo 7 on the couch while watching a movie. Sync it to ps5 in a heartbeat, grab a controller, and play in higher def whenever you want. I still play gt1 and 2 on my psp and vita. Goes to show how much id consider a psp3 and lower specs for it.
JUST GOT A PS VITA, ITS AWESOME! srry caps on
This is an excellent video
Thanks for watching!!
3DS for me also was home for indie games. I loved to replay "pc games" with stereoscopic effect.
I can't play Shovel Knight anywhere other than 3DS
Playstation portal would like a word with you and no, sony will not make ps vita 2. Those days are over 😂
You don't know that. The market's always changing and consolidating. Now, I can't imagine PS6 being a portable or hybrid, but you really never know. Steam Deck-likes are all the rage now, what if Sony pulled a Sega Nomad and released a PS5-compatible handheld alongside PS6?
You forgot the proprietary sd card by sony that is one of the main reason many fans got sour