The PlayStation Vita is a curious little system. While it’s not a bad portable system in its own right, Sony pretty much dropped support for it like a shot when it didn’t quite sell up to expectations. That said, the handheld still has quite a following, and many fans are hoping that Sony might give the portable gaming market a second chance with some kind of follow-up.
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Alas, it doesn’t look that way. The company’s president and global CEO, Andrew House, recently spoke to Bloomberg about its thoughts on the portable gaming market, and while the PlayStation Vita didn’t do horrible, it did only sell an estimated ten million units by the end of 2015 – which can’t even compare to Sony’s console numbers.
With the success of the Nintendo Switch, the interviewer asked if Sony was considering giving the market another try with its own hybrid system – but it doesn’t appear to be. “The Nintendo device is a hybrid device and that’s a different approach and strategy,” explained House. “We have not seen (handheld gaming outside of Japan) as being a huge market opportunity.”
So where will the team focus? Well, with 60 million PlayStation 4’s sold and even more expected to sell with big games like God of War and Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man, the answer seems pretty clear to them. “We remain focused around a highly connected gaming experience and also coupled with having a great range of other entertainment experiences so you can reach multiple people on the big screen in the household,” House explained.
Still, it’s a bit sad, because the Vita had tons of potential, and third-party developers really nailed a lot of experiences with the system at launch. For instance, Capcom’s port of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was pretty cool, and Sony had some great games as well, including the Ratchet & Clank Collection, Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time and the Jak & Daxter Collection, amongst countless others.
Alas, the Vita will just remain a novelty – but one fans will appreciate with new games coming over the next few months, including Square Enix’s upcoming HD remake of Secret of Mana, which will be released on PlayStation 4 and PS Vita alike.
