For gamers, the Sony PlayStation Vita never took off. Now the industry is wondering if Sony is giving up on the handheld console altogether, according to Forbes.
In a recent session with reporters, Shuhei Yoshida, Sony’s lead executive on the PlayStation Vita wouldn’t say if the company was developing a successor to the Vita, noting that the dominance of mobile gaming makes the market challenging for a new portable console.
But experts question whether the competition with mobile gaming was the major factor in the Vita’s lackluster sales. While mobile gaming is surely gaining market share, they note that Sony’s previous portable, the PSP, far outsold the Vita. They also point to the 50 million units of Nintendo’s 3DS that sold, far ahead of Sony’s portable.
Sony, the experts say, mishandled its marketing of the Vita. The company failed to make its large cache of PS1 and PS2 games available for the portable, and gave up on it quickly when sales did not materialize. The portable also suffered from expensive memory cards and shoddy exclusives.
While Sony seems hesitant on a new portable, one expert believes that Nintendo is planning to launch a hybrid between a portable and a home console, or a streamlined portable with some console features. The gaming market, say experts, is large enough to support new portables along with the growing mobile gaming sector.