So Sony is the latest company to drop out of the handheld race, leaving Nintendo once again in the lead and by an absolute longshot. Joining the ranks of Neo-Geo, Sega Game Gear, Lynx, Gamate, WonderSwan, N-Gage, and many more, the PSP series is going by the wayside after years of slowly disappearing from obscurity. There are dozens of reasons why the other handhelds didn’t work, but Sony’s departure is a bit of an enigma considering if anyone can take on Nintendo, it would be Sony. Sony has the history, the resources, and the fanbase to pull it off.
Sony was in the first for a decade. The PSP despite its less-than-stellar reputation in the United States, still managed to sell a superb 80+ million copies. Japan, that fun little country, accounted for a quarter of the sales. Even though the software sales weren’t a fraction of what the Nintendo DS pulled off (Nintendo DS Games with 7+ million sold: 13. Playstation Portable Games with 7+ million sold: 1), the hardware sales were definitely higher than all the previous non-Nintendo handhelds.
So what happened you ask? Sony claims it’s because the smartphone industry damaged its sales. But that is extremely far from the truth.
The Vita got delayed when it could have really punched the 3DS during the dismal launch. The Vita lacked any major IPs when it could have transferred some of its successful console franchises (Final Fantasy, Little Big Planet, Ratchet and Clank, etc.). The Vita could have had some price cuts as opposed to being twice as expensive as the 3DS after you throw in the insane $100 memory cards (A price cut is what SAVED the 3DS). The Vita could have transferred all the PSX/PS2 classics to the handheld to keep the quantity high as opposed to ho-humming its backwards-compatibility. Lastly, Sony could have made adjustments during its extremely tough first year and instead abandoned the handheld into obscurity.
It was left to die.
There is room for success in the handheld industry, as long as you appeal to the correct crowd. The Nintendo 3DS will never reach the astronomical numbers of the original DS because of the meteoric rise of smartphones and tablets, yet has managed 53 million copies. It may not be as big a deal in America, but in Japan there’s nowhere else to go but up. It took the only franchise that made the PSP relevant (Monster Hunter), revved up the amount of software, and made it far more affordable than the PS Vita and also created products that would appeal to both coasts. Argue what you will about all the asinine decisions related to the WiiU, Nintendo figured out how to beat the odds and made the 3DS a device that has earned them more than 10 billion. Sony threw in the towel far too early.
Nintendo’s success and failures has been directly tied to the amount of software it releases for its consoles---not memory power. The Nintendo Game Boy survived nearly a decade against far better-looking options because of games like Tetris, Link’s Awakening, and especially Pokemon. The Nintendo Wii and Super Nintendo were its last two console victories because it had the most games, and most of the best games. The WiiU and Gamecube have been its biggest failures (Virtual Boy isn’t even going to be brought up…ever) because of the lack of software. This is what doomed the Vita: not the competition, not the cheaper options, but because of the sheer lack of reason to spend the money on it.
The Vita is dead. But it didn’t have to die.
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