Topic: True reasons of Vita's fail =)

• The 3DS still has a market, albeit diminished. Most parents would not buy a smart phone for their child unti he or she hits the tweens (or a little latter). But they would buy that said 7 to 10 year old a 3DS without batting much of an eye.
• With a diminished portable gaming market in general, it leaves even smaller room for the Vita line, which like the PSP, was always aimed at the core market. The Vita is superior to the 3DS hands down in terms of hardware (although I think it's ergonomics are meh), but the 3DS intuitive and accessible to a wider market.
• Nobody for the time being really can carry a dedicated portable gaming device in the west besides first and second parties......hence why the 3DS has found its place, and why the Vita has become a indie / JPRG machine.
• Bottomline, I just don't think an expensive, specs focused piece of dedicated portable gaming hardware has a market in the west, outside of that small core following.

I don't think the vita is the issue as it has its own library alongside the ps3/4. I think people in general are the reason the vita is percieved as a failure, look at the OP. Because you have your own ideas as to what should be mobile and what shouldn't, you believe the vita isn't for portable gaming. The 3ds has games that aren't on ios or tablets, the vita has games not available to ios or tablets. Its the general outlook that the vita is a failure that crushes the vita's chance at becoming more than what it is now. If you you're self believe its bad more than likely you will tell others its bad and so on the cycle continues and boom the vita sells like crap!

I truly believe there'd be a market for a peripheral for ios devices that basicly is a dualshock 4 controller where you slide your smartphone into, giving you basicly an ios powered handheld device. Now Sony (and Nintendo too for that matter) should just put out their games on iOS, that peripheral required to play. You could also use remoteplay on that said device and naturally (since you have all the buttons) play your PS4 games on your iPhone.

I know it's a far fetch but that way everyone has a mobile device already (smartphone) and can make it as much gamey as they want. Parents could decide when to buy the kid a smartphone and if they want to upgrade it to a gaming device. Since most people have their phones with them all the time anyways, you'd basicly just carry your peripheral controller with you, slide your smartphone in and have the best of all worlds. Whoever can make this happen will OWN all worlds of the handheld market.

Let me dream.

If Nintendo was to release a full fledged title on IOS, it would be a very sad day for video games in general.

The vita has failed because no one outside of core gamers knows what it is. There is no awareness of the device. I got mine for Christmas 2013. Since then I have used it out and about a number of times to play through old ps1 games. Every person who has mentioned it thinks its a PSP. In Spain a 20ish fella thought it was an old psp, on the plane a kid said I used to have one of those PSPs, my kids wont touch it as they don't think its any good and my eldest son who games a lot also thought it was a PSP. When I got it (and I'm glad I did) I didn't know what it was (I played xbox at the time). Luckily my wife took a chance and I play it all the time.

This only shows the general downfall of society, people don't know anything. It's sad. Imagine the same scenario only instead of the Vita imagine "political awareness" - its mindboggling that people are so occupied with their chores and meaningless trending all cast upon us by media and society that funnily enough the very system so keen to activate us as costumers fails to draw our attention on a superbly crafted product like the Vita which - given the beforementioned awareness - should basicly sell like hotcakes. But oh my...

Please watch the language -Tasuki-

Downfall of society?

50 years ago you couldn't get a job because you happened to be black, your family would disown you if you happened to be gay, and dad would go to church every Sunday with mom, only to beat her to a pulp that night.

Society has a lot wrong with it, always will, the invasion of privacy, mass consumerism, etc.....but on a whole, we are becoming more forgiving and knowledgeable.

Maybe a bit too deep for a thread about the PlayStation Vita... xD

I don't know it feels like a good post to bring some back to reality and how the Vita not selling doesn't really reflect a downward trend in society.

@sub12 I agree with what you said, but personally I believe that old problems just get replaced with new ones. Sure the gay son is free to live his life however he wants, there are hardly any rules anymore to one's personal lifestyle otherwise it's offsensive to them immediately, and yeah all the housewives don't spend the time beaten to a pulp at home behind their stoves, they have careers and almost equal rights and freedom, therefore their children spend a mostly motherless first few years of their childhood in day-care centers and their dads beat them now instead of their mom (im dramatizing here). And so on. Concentrating on the topic at hand all I wanna say is that with no rules and ultimate freedom comes a price, it's people without orientation, without the urge or need to explore and educate themselves about their surroundings. And yes I think you can boil it down to: mass consumerisim and advertising. Back in the day you had the Gameboy OR the Gamegear. Rich kids got the Gamegear only to find out that it was heavy, battery life was abysmal and there were no kids to exchange and play games with. (been there, done that). So the Gameboy was a huge success. Also it had pretty strong advertisement back in the day and was around a very long time before it was followed up by the Gameboy Color. Today? You got PLENTY of options besides the Vita, marketing was abysmal and of course people swallow what's been fed to them through the media (and there mobile phones are ever-so-present) without second-guessing or questioning anything. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but I think, all in all, the past 30 years have done a great job in raising generations of good customers/consumers that don't ask many questions. And I think this is the ultimate cause of Vita's fail: Oversaturation of the market, weak media exposure through advertising, no interest of the broad public to look beyond shiny smartphone ads, otherwise they would have found that the Vita is a truly wonderfuly piece of hardware, like everyone will tell you, who actually owns one.

Again, I don't want to step on anyone's toes. That's just how I see my world.

I agree with your points on both, thanks for your post. Just talking to my friends who are married, you do kind of wonder what the future holds. Your child or tween asks for a portable gaming system, most parents look at a dedicated gaming device, the 40 dollar games.......and then they look at the app store and the wealth of free options (quality need not apply). To an extent people have sacrificed quality hardware and software for cheap costs and ease of use. You can argue that the 3DS has done alright this generation, but still, the dent from the ios generation is visible.