You Live And You Learn: Sony's Taking Inspiration From PSP's Failing To Ensure Vita Is A Success.

The system's sold more than 70 million units to date, so regardless of your stance it's unarguably achieved much more than any other portable gaming device not manufactured by Nintendo. But mistakes were made during Sony's first foray into portable gaming, and Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida is keen to acknowledge them.

"There are many lessons we have learned, but if you ask me to pick one lesson… Before the launch, as far as the hardware goes we didn’t put enough resources in the hardware to allow us to develop games that are unique to the PSP compared to home consoles," he told GameInformer magazine.

"We had many products on PSP, but most of these games like God of War [Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta] came from the console. Basically, you can play a bigger, better version of these titles on PS3. So pre-launch of PSP we were too happy with having the basic capability of PS2-class games to play on PSP, in terms of the screen and CPU/GPU. But after the launch and a few years time, just having pretty graphics isn’t enough. Especially when you can play a bigger, better game on home consoles."

Shuhei continued that Sony's tried to include as much unique technology into the PlayStation Vita as possible. A trait he hopes will differentiate the portable from PS3.

"That’s the one big lesson when we designed the PS Vita. Because it is portable and because it’s a new technological development, we can put a touchscreen, touchpad, cameras, GPS, or 3G capabilities. We made sure that developers will be able to make use of these features that are unique to portable systems, so that with games we can continue to produce something very exciting that you cannot find on games on home console. So that’s one lesson."

But according to Shuhei Yoshida, technology wasn't the only issue. The executive added that more resources should have been put on software development, and it's not a problem the platform holder is planning to retread.

"The second lesson comes post-launch of the PSP. Because we shifted development resources to the PS3 launch, we kind of stopped supporting PSP games post-launch. That was a big mistake, because we didn’t realize that third-party developers were doing the same because they were working on the new launch of software on the PS3, Nintendo Wii, and XBOX 360 as well," he explained.

"So going into the PS Vita, because it’s our second time, we are making sure that we won’t make the same mistakes, meaning that we’ll continue to support PS Vita with a stream of good titles through release. So I pick these two as the lessons learned from PSP. I would also say that security and piracy was a problem with the PSP as well, and that will be fortified with PS Vita."

Yoshida's certainly got his head screwed on. If anyone can make the PlayStation Vita's launch a success, it's him.

[Thanks GameInformer]