The PS Vita didn't fail, Sony failed the PS Vita.

$100+ for a 64gb for a memory card? Sony's greedy scam got to them really good at the end.

“No one wants to play AAA games on the go”... Nintendo “hold my witcher moonshine”

"Only sold 18 million" Wii U crying in the corner

"The Vita failed because of mobile phones" 3DS: "Lmao okay"

The community, hackers and modders were the only ones that kept this console alive as it could. They even managed to have unity development on the vita, have micro sd cards work, overclock speed and perfectly emulated the psp console more faster in vita. Sony failed by keeping sony sd cards expensive

To this day I have never seen a Vita outside of GameStop in person.

"When the Switch launched, many gamers had forgotten the PS Vita even existed" I'll be honest here, I forgot I even owned a Vita until like a year after owning a Switch. I just like "Oh yeah, I own a vita" one day.

The dumb vita memory card is the whole reason why I didn't buy it and never will if they stay expensive.

I blame the memory card... it made the handheld a 300 dollar sistem.

I remember when the Vita was announced I thought anyone who would choose the 3DS over it was an idiot. Then the memory card prices came out and instantaneously I was all in on the 3DS.

I remember picking this up in the Little Big Planet bundle in the first few months of release. I fell in love with it. Used it’s camera all the time, and had AR games that used it. The games looked stunning for a handheld at the time! I was addicted to it! But the library was so small, and wasn’t expanding fast at all. I still find myself picking it up every once in a while for Minecraft, Borderlands, EDF or Uncharted.

Let’s be honest here, the only reason any of us bothered buying a VITA was because that was the only console to play Persona 4 Golden.

I was a big fan of the PSP, but Sony pushed the Vitas ability to download games to the point, I thought that downloading them was the only way to put games in it. Not only was my internet really slow back then, but I had storage capacity concerns. I also thought that upgrading to the vita would hasten the death of physical media.

Don't need to watch the vid. The answer is obvious: Memory Cards

The price of the mexmory cards was never fixed, they are still expensive as hell.

Why during the whole video you talk about DS, PSP but completely forget about the contemporary competitor of Vita that was the 3DS, is like telling the story of the console failure forgetting one of the main points, the competition.

"PSVita too good for it's time" I look at the Vita and still find it impressive to today's standards. If only it was marketed it as an actual psp instead of a console on the go.

If sony makes a portable console with the entire PSP, PSPVita, PS1 and PS2 libraries and partial PS3 libraries with even a few games in the pipeline, I would definitely get it. If they nintendo can get witcher 3 on the Switch, Sony shouldn't sleep on handheld because they have amassed an immense library of games over the past decades. They can make a big comeback.

You deliberately omitted the fact that 3ds existed

So many people in the western market will tell you "vita had no games". Any fan of japanese games will tell you that the vita had some of the best games of all time and was one of the best consoles in history. Vita is a JRPG gold mine.

"People don't really buy handheld consoles to play immersive AAA games for hours and hours on end" If not for the games, people mostly bought the Nintendo Switch for portability so I don't know what your talking about lol. I think your previous point made more sense: 1. The Vita, memory cards, the games were (and still are!) way too expensive 2. Proprietary memory cards 3. No first party titles.

Because Sony didn't bother to support it. There. Saved you 13 minutes.

Honestly, when they lowered the price of the Memory Cards they didn't lower them by much. Had Sony used a Micro SD card....the Vita would be a smash hit. People wanted to like it...Sony just wouldn't let people like it.

I am kind of puzzled ... did your forget about the main Vita competitor? The 3ds outsold the Vita a lot. The DS was already dead that when the Vita was launched.

Short answer: Greed and a lack of good games

Anyone else remembers DAXTER from the PSP That was my childhood game and one of my favorites

I feel that you were pretty spot on with connecting a lack of indie game advertising to the Vita's failure. I feel that the Switch has done extremely well by pushing indie titles to the forefront because they come out much more often at a much lower price than AAA, thus making the console much more exciting and enticing to a consumer. Now that the user base is there we are seeing a lot more AAA games coming to the Switch, which may have been able to happen for the vita too if they had taken a different approach to their inital advertising.

0:42 Nah nah, 2006 is like 5 years ago, 6 tops. And that's settled.

I loved my vita still pissed off at sony to this day

Damn I got one of these on Christmas at my grandpas house. Now he’s gone. I got to find this bad boy and play it for the memories.

I never saw a Vita Commercial in my life.

People here who have a dusty unused Vita, go look Henkaku and H-Encore. You can jail break your vita and pirate games and play emulators and more.

PSP was LIT. Fucking loved that thing. However, im gonna be honest. I thought the ps Vita was just a slightly upgraded PSP so I didn't get it.

The PSVita should’ve really been called “The Persona Vita” since that was the only game people bought the thing for

"People don't want to play triple a games on the go with an immersive experience, if they wanted to play those games they would buy a home console." Switch Lite: ...

This is unfortunate as a topic for me because I play my PS VITA more than my 3DS. I still play the Legend of Heroes games on it. I probably will continue to use it consistently for years to come. Hopefully they won't shut the online store down entirely anytime soon. I've got more I want to buy for it eventually. It's so great.

There's people buying the Switch to only play portable, so there is a market for portable AAA its just the Vita didn't have many of them outside of JRPGS of course.

When they first announced the PSP Vita at the beginning of the year, it was ahead of it's time. By the time they released it at the year, it was outdated with 512 MB Ram and qHD (960 x 544). If it had 1GB of RAM and an HD (1280 X 720) screen like the new smartphones around launch, it would have been worth it. Just my opinion.

It's just too damn expensive for a handheld gaming console.

LittleBigPlanet Vita is one the best games on the system, it's the full LBP experience with a touchscreen

“To good for it’s time” . Yeah that sounds an awful like what happened to the Dreamcast.

I did focus testing for one of the Vita launch titles and remember being really excited for its release. However I kept waiting for more exclusives and games that made use of the unique hardware, but so few came that I ended up not buying a vita until after the system was fully hacked.

I miss my PSP and my iPod so bad 😭😪 those were the days...

Failed is an overstatement as people still play, it has a library that nobody ever thought it would have and even after it's "long gone" people will still play if they have one or try and find one. 🏆

Bro the PsVita was big, especially over seas. Sadly it wasn’t as big here as it was there but it was seriously a great handheld for a bunch of games. Mostly JRPGs but there were also amazing platformers and even some great FPS.

No one: KZfaq: watch a video about why ps Vita failed Me: but I never owned a ps Vita but I'll watch it

Having owned one, the greatest mistake with the vita was the memory card, it was expensive and transfer speed was so slow it was so disappointing.

Marketing and greed was the greatest downfall of the vita.

i didnt even know what a vita was until 2015 while looking for a new psp to buy for old times sake. i decided to get the vita and i loved it and have it til this day in 2019. cheers to hoping they make another handeld

12: 35 i'd have to disagree about being unable to pause whenever. Putting the vita in sleep mode is better than closing the ds imo as far as battery life. Gamewise it does the same thing, but i lost my vita for a whole month and when i had finally found it the battery was still going strong. Most amazing thing. The vita will always hold a special place in my heart

I'm an alternate universe, the Vita turns into PlayStation' s version of the Switch

The PSP was my favorite handheld ever when I was a kid cause of the racing games you could get. I completed underground rivals so many times and midnight club 3. When the vita came out I bought one but the problem for me was games. I never could find any. Every time I would go to game stop they would have maybe 5 games and they were super cheap boring games and not the better ones like MGS or borderlands 2. It was an awesome console but I never could find any damn games for it.

I mean, the PSVita is more memorable than the Nokia N-Gage.

I remember being so hyped about the PSVita when it was coming out. It was my dream handlheld. It was perfect indeed. Yet I never got one because there was no games that really made it worth it.

Getting one of these for Christmas was such an amazing feeling. That was years ago and I have since sold it

On the bright side it sold more then the WII U

Short Version: the super expensive memory cards were the reason it failed.

Sony: Welcome to the world Vita, your name means "life" Several years later.... Sony: You're dead to me!

I remember being at Best Buy and having a Vita in my hand. Then I went to grab a memory card and saw the outrageous price on it and I said hell no and left the Vita and walked away. Thats the reason the Vita failed. Sony lacks common sense. All they had to do was offer an affordable memory card.

I think really the biggest reason the PS Vita failed was because of the fact it was essentially a handheld that tried too hard to be like a console. The reason Nintendo is highly successful with their handhelds is because they have a good understanding of what people expect and want from a handheld system. It also helps that many of their games translate well into a portable experience. It also probably didn't help the Vita either that it released right around the time the 3DS was actually starting to recover and take off. When you think about it, the Nintendo Switch uses a lot of the same concepts and features of the Vita but with far better implementation and execution.

The proprietary memory was a big no for me. I had to install a CFW to finally enjoy it

You nailed it, I was stuck with an 8gb memory and every time I went to GameStop to see what games to get I found the same 30 games on the shelf

Ayyyyye, nice video length!

ps vita didn’t fail me that’s more important.

The Vita: the perfect example of death by feedback loop. Also, no mention of the whole 3G cellular deal with ATT? That shitstorm was HILARIOUS.

Sony could easily fix what they did wrong. Remove the back touch pad. Lower price of the memory card. Change the main gui to a more similar psp gui matching the other consoles. Remove the cameras. Give it a psp game reader for cross compatibility with psp games and it would be perfect.

ik this video is 3 years old, but 250$ in 2012 is a huuuuuge amount, at the time people knew the ps4 was right around the corner and they knew roughly how much it would cost. no one in 2012 was jumping to spend 300$ for a handheld, people where still hesitant about the switch 5 years later, but it had so many more spectacular features

I used to play my vita everyday... Until I got a Nintendo switch

honestly its sad how expensive the memory cards are. if it wasnt so expensive i believe it would have sold at least double of its sales.

i used to have one of these and later sold it/took it back. i don’t recall why, but i still wish it didn’t die off.

Man, consider yourself lucky that your childhood handhelds were so advanced. The OG Gameboy dominated the entire decade of my childhood.

At 10:07 were you watching breaking bad?? It’s a great show tho Also great video, I never really knew that much about the ps vita.

Hope you played Gravity Rush, that game is too awesome to skip

Around 10:15 - While it might have been due to lack of games games, I bigger reason for the system failure, as people said, was the memory cards. The system didn't sell well, BECAUSE people weren't going to spend $100's of extra for memory cards. So, they just never bought the system when they found out the hidden costs. I know you mentioned it was due to lack of games, but the lack of system's sales, were mainly due to the memory cards. So, with lack of sales, you didn't see as many games. Memory cards caused lack of sales and many devs went elsewhere. While I understand Sony wanted to prevent piracy by using their own cards, they failed by making the system pretty much not worth it with the extra costs. Had Sony been smart and just used MicroSD cards, I honestly think the PS Vita would have sold better as MicroSD cards were cheaper than Sony's cards. Sony then could have just done a better job at the Vita security if they were really concerned with piracy. I do agree they shouldn't have marketed it as a "AAA experience on the go" but instead should have marketed it as an upgraded and successor to the PSP. Doing this wouldn't isolate it to AAA games and cover everybody. I mean saying "It's for AAA games on the go" is kinda a middle finger to indie devs as in that statement, you don't even acknowledge them. Saying it's an upgrade and successor to the PSP, is a more neutral approach is far more accurate. In short, Sony shot themselves in the foot with the Vita. It was the system that could have done well, but failed due to their own stupid decisions.

Honestly, I feel the Vita was sort of trapped between the shift from dedicated handhelds to the "bring your console games on the go" gap. The PSP, DS, 3DS were all dedicated handheld systems and were the latest thing and Sony didn't want to go too far from the status-quo or didn't have the foresight to think that playing console-level games would be fitting on a TV as well. Nintendo seemingly understood that aspect and made the Switch with it, and I wouldn't be surprised if they learned from Vita's mistakes. I do say that if Sony held the Vita back just a bit longer to get good enough hardware to make it sort of like a "PS3P" properly but based on ARM so devs can easily downgrade games from the PS4 onto it, then I feel that the system would've lived into today with us getting a PS4P around a year or two ago. It solves the same problem that Nintendo did with the Switch, one platform to develop games for, and it would also solve that problem for Sony.

Tearaway and Gravity Rush made the system amazing for me! Some of the best games I have ever played. Makes me sad that Sony gave up on it early on.

Vita will have a purpose as long as Persona 4 Golden doesn't come to Switch

I got a 2nd hand vita recently and it's really fun to play on the go, the only problem I have with it is those memory cards, even a second hand memory card, the price was slightly dropped but it was still a bit expensive

Good yes. Perfect? No. The moment they had proprietary sd cards it was not.

As much as I love the Vita, my biggest gripe was the cost of the memory cards. The biggest one I have is 16GB. As much as I would love to get a bigger sized memory card, the prices are way too extortionate. If I recall, Sony prevented 3rd party memory cards from being used.

Sony got greedy with the memory cards and they should have emphasized the importance of indie games for the console.

Hardware wise, the only thing the vita needed was 2 more face buttons and maybe 2 more shoulder buttons. Software wise, it needed a little of everything.

the point you made about time commitment is so true. I played the MGS collection on my Vita, and i just kept thinking that these games are horrible for handheld. How did anyone think that a handheld gamer on the go would have time to watch 3 hours of cutscenes?

I remember the frustration i felt when i finally got my PS Vita and couldn't play a game i had bought because i didn't have a card. Yet i loved the PS Vita, i actually have the fat, the slim and the PS TV.

Broo, Cars 2 on the gameboy was such a good game!

I recall that one time Sony banked hard on Call of Duty being the saving grace for the Vita in the west. That game was "Black Ops: Declassified" and it was a disaster.

12:20 You can do this on the Vita. Just click the power button. You come back to where you left off when you turn it back on. I found that out while playing through P4G and being in between save points.

Hopefully Sony has learned from their proprietary BS. Apple they ain't.

It's should've just been called the PSP 2 and it would've sold better I remember people would ask me what it was and when I said PS Vita they were like what's that? But then I tell them it's the new PSP they were got it.

the psp had a nice feature where using the off switch didnt fully turn it off, and the game started right where you left off. (i had the 3000 model, not sure if others did). kinda sad to see that the vita didnt have the same feature

I bought a Vita back in 2013 because I loved my PSP and was excited for a sequel to it. I ended up barely touching it because of the lack of physical games and the cost of the memory cards. The memory cards making using it as a digital only console expensive as fuck. It wasn't until last year when I decided to check if it had been hacked yet, and discovering it had, that I picked it up again. Now I actually use it. Given it's gain in popularity thanks to the homebrew scene, and specifically homebrew enabling the use of SD cards, I think this console would have definitely sold better had it launched with SD support and not proprietary memory.

The initial price of the Vita and the overprices Vita memory cards were the real problems. That's why people bought the Nintendo 3DS instead of the Vita. And the low sell numbers of the Vita discouraged developers. And it's the same problem with the xbox one . The initial xbox one price was too expensive compare to the PS4 one. And the justification was the obligation to get the kinect that nobody give a fuck. They wanted too much money and too much control.

I remember getting this with call of duty on my birthday. My uncle got me it and I was at a cafe. Got this provided me with some of my best memories. Even if it flopped, I loved it and I still do. Even though I am a XBOX player, I still thank sony for this. Edit: I also played probably 100+ hours on Minecraft on it. I played a lot of Terraria too.

I got my first Ps Vita from winning letter of the month in Edge magazine December 2013. I used to buy that mag every month along with Games, Empire, and Total Film. Bygone days.

Fantastic video! I learned a lot. =]

In a short way it was simply because of the overpriced memory cards and the lack of consistency in bringing console quality games to the system.

The Switch straight up looks like a PSVita

Its been so long that I haven't had my PSP, that I can't even remember when it disappeared from my life. But i do remember that one of my favourites games ever is UNTOLD LEGENDS: BROTHERHOOD OF THE BLADE

Still got my modded psp. I pulled it out of storage recently and the battery expanded and was popping out.