Why did the Vita flop so badly in the West?

>“Vita is still a viable platform, chiefly in the Japanese and Asian markets,” he explained. “We still have developers in Japan who are building for that platform. But it just didn’t get over the hump in Europe and America. It’s hard to know exactly why, but it didn’t garner a large enough audience here for us to continue to build for it.”

>“To be honest, the Vita just didn’t reach critical mass in the U.S> or Western Europe,” Layden added. “I don’t know if it was that it was more technology people had to carry around, or more things to charge, or whether their phone or tablet was taking care of that. But once the content slowed in that pipeline, it became hard to keep the Vita as a growing concern.”

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Because Sony believed the western market only cared about pixelshit hipster indie games

It's a redundant device in a world where phones exist. The idiot's answer is memory card prices - this is wrong because anyone who has $299 to throw away on a handheld has another $99 to throw away on a memory card to use on the handheld.

Library issues. I know people bash whatever console reaches a large library for having "shovelware" but a variety of 7/10 games is enough to bait people. Not that the 3DS is that good, but it got the echoes of the fuckhuge library of the DS.

Nevertheless, handheld gaming is dead. RIP.

No games, had to compete with Nintendo.

Where's that fucking video of a guy who threw his 3DS into the trash once he heard the Vita announcement? It's amazing how people make fool of themselves because of their own hubris

That was AFTER they saw it fail, though. When it released, it had stuff like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Killzone: Mercenary and Soul Sacrifice.

The problem was that they gave up way too fast and decided to just put all of the indies there. I think their last attempt at selling the console was Freedom Wars, and sequel NEVER EVER.

if you dont like mario/zelda/pokemon the 3ds is pretty lackluster too

I still play my OG PSP 1000 from time to time though

Handheld audience don't really mix with console ones.

Even Nintendo is playing a bit careful with switch, on top of everything most of ps3 to vita ports were shit, it really lacked something like PSP GTA games or something more attractive.

no one wants to play "full console-like" games on handhelds though. soul sacrifice was pretty good though

That's just not true, user. 3DS has 3 pokemon games, like 2 mario games and 2 zelda remakes + 1 original. The library is flooding with other stuff.

Nobody was going to pay $100 for a 8GB memory card.
No piracy.
3DS was better when it had no games.

Horrible advertisement in the west that focused on the useless remote play feature for the PS3 since this was before the PS4 was out. They even got sued for false advertisement since remote play on PS3 barely fucking worked for jack shit.

Not true, its an amazing SMT machine. Harvest Moons sims and mystery dungeons platform aswell

I bought it because I wanted to play Megaman Legends 3... Didn't work that well. Though I still found some nice games. It did help a lot, however, that I did not have a DS either, so it was my first time playing a lot of DS shit like Ace Attorney and Etrian Odyssey.

>no one wants to play "full console-like" games on handhelds though.
This. If I wanted to play Uncharted, I'd get a PS3 instead. Maybe if I had played the whole series on console and was really desperate for another Uncharted game and noticed this one was Vita exclusive, but let's be realistic here.

The memory cards

>No piracy.
Wasn't the 3DS successful for longer without piracy?

Fuck off cunt, just because i have money to spend doesn't mean i want to spend $100 on a 64 gb propeitary sd card clone when an actual microsd can store twice the ammount for half the price

My phone doesnt have a dpad or anologs
And touch screen fake sticks obscure the screen.

Simple answer, which is the same answer to "why wiiU was a failure", "why xbox was a failure", "why xbox one is a failure" and so on.
>NO
>GREAT
>EXCLUSIVES
which then translates to
>NO GAMES

PS3 was going to have a similar fate, if it wasn't for the games actually coming out after some years.

Will the Switch outsell the Vita Sup Forums?

>no one wants to play "full console-like" games on handhelds though
But most Nintendo handheld games are basically NES or SNES games at heart, at least the 2D ones. 2D died in the console space but kept living on handhelds.

Lacking in good exclusive, and library size is pretty small and not so appealing to western market, bunch of them is weeb games which western audience tend to avoid, this is why PSP died early in west while it still kicking for another year or two in japan.

It will in one year

I love the console. But the propriety memory cards was fucking retarded. Most the library was downloadable but you could only have like two games installed at a time without paying an arm and a leg.

>Switch
>handheld

>watching baby driver
>supposed to take place in 2017
>kid is playing a Vita
I mean, I know Wright is a sonybro like all yuropoors, but come on.

>outsell the Vita
It'll be relatively easy since vita never did good in the first place.

Proprietary memory cards is a big reason why. The other being the large number of nip games that never get localized.

>more preorders than DQ

I still wonder how, I know that a good chunk of people buy on first weeks, but goddamn.

Who is this semen demon?

technically less than DQ since it's divided between 2 platforms

me

Fuck off sony. You cunts just don't want to admit any wrong doing on your part. 'Gee, we just can't figure out why this console we smothered to death with pricey memory cards and a games drought didn't sell. Maybe westerners just didnt want to play handhelds like the 3ds which must be using arcane black magic and healing crystals to sell still.'

I traded my hacked 3ds for a henkaku'd vita 2 months ago and i will never regret it, the only good n3ds games were all fucking mario titles and i theyre the same shit from 30 years ago but with the screen resolution and framerate of 20 years ago, theres not a single good jrpg for the 3ds, SMT titles are fucking easy and even easier with dlc, one has 80 recycled assets from the other and the plot is less thick than in demikids
The only good thing about the 3ds and for me that's what made it triumph over the vita is Monster hunter, there's like 5 monhun clones for the vita and you can't get the same playtime or enjoyment out of those combined to cover the playtime of a single monhun on the 3ds.
Sony fucked it up with proprietary ports and memcards, it would have been more succesful if it had been hacked earlier.

This thread after that PS1 hate one is funny.

Link to PS1 hate thread? I wanna read dildo tears.

Personally, I'm finding very few situations where I can be bothered to bring my Vita, while I'll always have my phone with me. I'd take it over my phone any day I want some real entertainment, but making 15 minutes on the subway pass faster isn't worth all the pocket space that bulky thing takes up.

I wouldn't say handhelds are completely redundant, but they're in a very awkward position between phones and consoles. They're the kings of long airplane trips and lounging on the couch, but not much else. I was only sold because I really love my weeb games, but now Steam has started taking over there.

A good chunk of the original PSP's market (dudebros/cool kids who were too "grown up" for Nintendo) have moved on to mobile gaming as their fix and thus don't own and portable gaming system at all. Nintendo's been hit by mobile too, but not to the same extent.

Yes, there are other market segments for a Sony portable, but losing the aforementioned was a major blow to viability. There are other issues that Sony had such as the perception of price gouging on memory and the high out the gate price tag (again, something Nintendo has struggled with too)

Two reasons:
>Lawsuit forced all english-speaking commercials of the Vita to be illegal to show
>Memory card prices on top of an already expensive initial release prevented a stable purchase flow

The good news is that Vita owners are dedicated, so Vita games are still viable for all but the most expensive titles.

I have my vita beside me right now and I can tell you its because of bullshit sd card prices and lack of exclusives
I only have this shit because of how much games I've already accumulated and turns out a lot are pretty shit really, especially all these monster hunter clones
I only liked virtua tennis. I don't even know shit about tennis and even that is not a vita exclusive

>Abandon your sensible naming patterns that have clearly worked for 4 generations to call it the "Vita"
>Give it support for only the first year
>Run zero advertisements
>Gouge your playerbase with proprietary memory cards
>Allow a 240p eyerape screen handheld to get all the best handhelds games of the gen unchallenged
>Blame smartphones

No man, sony has no idea what you mean. Must be the consumers fault.

no games
inb4 a list of games that are also on PC and PS4

>>Lawsuit forced all english-speaking commercials of the Vita to be illegal to show

Wut

It's a Nintendo console. You already know the answer is yes.

Sony marketed the Vita as an HD handheld, which was a blatant fucking lie. The lawsuit is what made them give up on the Vita in the west.

They got sued over the fact that they advertised remote play on the PS3 as a feature which was barely functional.

They hired a company to create commercials for the Vita, but they didn't do their homework on the system and started advertising remote-play for the PS3 as though it could work flawlessly with every game. A lawsuit was filed against Sony that they lost, rendering all commercials created by that company for the Vita illegal to show on top of giving all who purchased a Vita from the initial release to a set time compensation.

Nice to know there's still some consequences for lying to your customers.

>That dude on the bus playing his PS3 games off his Vita's 3G commercial
What the fuck were they thinking

>What the fuck were they thinking
NEVER STOP PLAYING

God I hated those ads.
>Should we focus on advertising the system's library
>Nah, just advertise it as a glorified peripheral of another system

Not to mention that what the dude was doing was either effectively or literally impossible. I forget which.

is 64 the largest memory size?

>advertise PS3 as a supercomputer
>"oh shit, people are actually using it as a supercomputer!"
>update PS3 firmware blocking Linux installation
So glad they got hammered for that.

3G was such a worthless thing.

>vita
why is this still relevant to anyone besides for click bait

Because despite what you may think the Vita still sells equally well in software for 90% of multiplats. I think in the case of the Vanillaware titles, the Vita version even outsold the PS4 versions.

GEE IT COULDN'T BE THE MEMORY CARDS MAYBE

GOSH GOLLY HOW THE FUCK DID THE VITA NOT SELL BAZILLIONS

IT COULDN'T BE THAT A 1GB MEMORY CARD COSTS $239.99

Relevant

youtube.com/watch?v=ifH0enSp4rs

...

Because they stupidly refused to advertise anything at all that wasn't Uncharted and then threw in the towel when their multimillion dollar games didn't sell as much as they wanted. They also got a garbage company to do the Resistance and Call of Duty game which really did not help. Obviously there's also the price of the memory sticks which was and still is incredibly stupid.

>things you won't understand until you try it
People have been enjoying Burnout 3 lite on PSP for a long time, and I guarantee you people will lose their shit if Burnout 3 was remastered for Switch. I also enjoyed Tekken 5 and 6, because they were fundamentally identical to the console games, you can brush up on your moves and do the singleplayer modes for fun and novelty. Midnight Club 3 was an open world pimp your ride creator and that shit is fully intact on a PSP which is absolutely mind blowing. NBA Street Showdown is essentially Street Vol 2 with Vol 3's aesthetics in the palm of your hands and is the best arcade sports game for people who despise sports games. Want to take a guess what equivalent Nintendo showed in their Switch debut?

>(NOT A CLICKBAIT)
Always a good thing to have in a video title

>they gave up way too fast
This. And when they tried to support the vita again it was half-hearted.

Because they still had the PSP and PSPGo running around. Vita was just seen as redundant.

Have you looked at the timeline of the Vita at all? Timing is the sole reason why it failed. That and memory cards. PS Vita launched in NA Feb 15 2012. That's right smack dab between Ice Cream Sandwich (Oct 19 2011) and Jellybean (June 27 of 2012). Android gaming was just becoming viable then.

The switch is the first time you can play actual console games on the go. The PSP and VIta failed because it was half assed water downed versions of real console games while Nintendo innovated due to allowing real console games to be played.

This is why the switch is selling out, it's because this innovation has never been done before.

I think in the west, only Nintendo has learned how to market games that aren't AAA blockbusters, i.e. games that are only marketable on consoles. At least that's the impression I get from E3 every year.

Not true, for the simple fact that the switch is a handheld, making all the games on it handheld games. it's just a glorified PSP2000.

Android gaming has NEVER been viable you fucking retard.

What about BOTW that was designed for a console and the brought to Switch? Or the other number of console games the Switch can handle

You overestimate how much the casual market demand out of their games.

It flopped in Japan too. Just to a lesser degree.

Sony learnt it recently though, with stuff like N Sane. But now it is a bit too late to apply it to good use.

Bad launch games.
I wanted vita, because psp was my best (and I think it still is) purchase and hardware wise was great. But, nothing from launch titles interest me.
I decided to wait for cod, because of one analog in psp, I missed some fps portable game the most, but it was rushed awfullnes.
By the time killzone happen, vita was dead to me already.
Good racing vidya (with licensed cars) could save console for me, but that never happen.

Oh boy. 0.000000009% of Smartphone games EVER have made a profit. It's a totally viable platform guys.

Literally because the memory card s now cost more than the console itself.
It's a great little machine, but holy fuck the memory card shit was just killing it before there was any chance of it taking off.

Yes it has. It always has. Before smartphones people had to carry around separate devices to do different tasks. When these things became unified pagers went, digital cameras went, calculators went, radios and MP3 players went, portable DVD players went...and so did most peoples reason for owning their Nintendo DS or their GBA or their PSP. They didn't need those systems anymore, the distractions they wanted were built right in to their phone.

That's because they use a completely different business model where creating a dozen failed games isn't a big deal as long as they manage to get one hit.

>Android gaming has NEVER been viable you fucking retard.
>Bullshits from my ass are facts

telecomasia.net/content/android-overtake-ios-games-revenue-2017

androidauthority.com/2016-recap-90-percent-google-play-revenue-gaming-fun-stats-743626/

No user, people don't have additional 1/3 of the device's price to throw on the fucking memory card.
What the fuck, this is some american meta. And rich american meta at that.

Those are handheld games now. It just shows that the Wii U is less powerful than the newest Galaxy Note or iPad.

A good 99% of companies haven't had a hit though.

Smartphone is literally all flukes and preestablished IPs. It's "viable" in the same way facebook games are.

The 3DS is also pretty much walking proof that the handheld gaming and smartphone gaming market easily coeexist. There is no overlap in who will play a whale targeting skinnerbox and who will buy a handheld for games.

How many people do you see with a 3ds outside a day vs how many own a smartphone?

Because the memory cards were overpriced.

On college campuses where the demographic who plays them resides? Almost daily.

The last time I saw somebody gaming on a smartphone? Last summer with Pokemon GO.

it wasn't PSP2

Facebook gaming was a fad for like 2 years before it burst. Smartphone gaming have been around for nearly 10 years and it's still growing.

Some games like Candy Crush and Puzzle & Dragons have been going for 5+ years now.

No killer app for the US
No advertising outside Asia
Expensive proprietary format

Meanwhile, the 3DS has the upside of all of those things (all big names for handhelds, much more affordable, being forced on everything Nintendo makes)

The 3DS may never reach DS, or even PSP levels, but that it's still making Nintendo money is a testament to the general argument for dedicated handheld videogame platforms. Quite simply, all-in-one phones will never beat a dedicated handheld console and fall short in ways that are much vaster than falling short of a dedicated camera or MP3 player or calculator. As technology improves, later phones may equal things even like the Switch, but because the future handhelds have access to that same technology, they'll continue to stay ahead of the curb.

Right now, handheld consoles offer games you just can't get on phones, and not just for exclusivity reasons. You can play any song on your phone, watch any movie, take good photos, but you still can't equal the processing power of dedicated consoles unless you sacrifice in other areas more important to Smartphones.

Whether the market for handheld will continue to be viable as certain kinds of game become more possible on Smartphones is unknown, but right now there's still an obvious need for handhelds in a Smartphone world.

>A good 99% of companies haven't had a hit though.
Do you have something you didn't just pull out of your ass?

There's obviously some luck involved in making a hit, but devs bypass that by using a lean development model that works really well for the platform.

It failed because Sony screwed over consumers again and again AND AGAIN, and literally the only value it has a console is based 3rd party developers putting cheap fun games on there. Sony were too quick to abandon it, so if you're not into the games said 3rd party devs are making you would be absolutely fucked as a consumer. Sony will never have a successful handheld again and it's not just because phones are a thing.

>vs how many own a smartphone
>What are attach rates
So many people owning a smartphone doesn't mean shit when significantly less than one percent are regularly giving their money to smartphone gaming.

Whereas of the several million who own 3DS, a very good percentage of those owners regularly spend money to play games on the 3DS. In the Vita's case a ridiculous amount of the people who own one still do this.

If you honestly think Smartphone gaming was as healthy as the 3DS you're a delusional faggot. A million development teams throwing garbage at the platform to see what sticks doesn't mean smartphone gaming is in a good place.

>but devs bypass that by using a lean development model that works really well for the platform
Call it what it fucking is. They spend double the time on how they're gonna hook whales and milk their 12 regular customers for everything they're worth than they do on figuring out the "gameplay" if you can call it that.

And their STILL the only games going after 5 years.

Those two and angry birds over the span of about a decade does not a healthy platform make.

I never understood the phone meme. Why would I want to game there when all phones have is ad ridden, pay to win bullshit games? The vita fumbled chiefly because of the insane card prices. That started a deadly cycle of no install base > no games > no interest that the system never recovered from.

Handhelds weren't popular because they're handhelds the 3ds is popular because it's an RPG machine and had Pokemon, the Vita only has nice stuff and the 3ds is holding stuff like SMT hostage which I'd much rather on home console.

Sure they offer something, but do they offer enough to enough people? Because if the market shrinks enough that more and more devs decide that developing for handhelds just isn't worth it, their libraries will get worse, and people will have less and less reason to buy one, creating a downward spiral. We could be in the upper part of that spiral right now.

Successful hits are still made every year. Clash Royale was released just a year ago.