The PlayStation Vita is officially dead. Sony held the handheld’s funeral today in front of a small audience of straggling mourners, as it added a nondescript update to its Japanese website pronouncing that production of the platform has now ceased. We’d like to take this opportunity to hold a moment of silence in recognition of the console that could.
To be fair, the format’s had a decent run, surviving over seven years in its native Japan, where it performed reasonably well. Despite generally being well-liked, it endured a torrid time in Europe and North America, failing to captivate an increasingly smartphone obsessed market. A lack of software and high costs ultimately doomed the device, but it will generally be remembered as a likeable product that simply released at the wrong time.
[source jp.playstation.com, via jp.playstation.com, gematsu.com]
Comments 82
I'll never forget Persona 4 Golden. Game genuinely had a life changing effect on me at the time, and ultimately that's thanks to the Vita. Neat little console.
The Vita is a great handheld. It's almost sad that it didn't get the support and sales it deserved.
Currently playing Resident Evil 2 (the original) on mine. Vita means life.
Vita's biggest enemy to success wasn't smartphones. It wasn't Nintendo. It was Sony.
Vita island will never die. The life rafts have just all been scuppered so we cant get off, and no new visitors can come to play!
Long live the uncrowned princess. As for funerals, Vita is no deader than all the other discontinued consoles before it. The produced stock will circulate among interested consumers for a good while (seriously, nowadays you can even find an N64 with some effort, here IN FRIGGIN' MINSK - somewhere you would never find a trace of it back in its heyday), and the games will be up for discovery for even longer. Sony isn't even planning to drop PS Store support yet (and just as well - unlike with PSP, you can't sideload games from PS3, although you technically can store your purchased games on separate offline media). And my own Vita still retains its massive backlog and a sizeable wishlist including many games uncertain to "switch" to newer hardware - plus, the compromises and my waning usage of it notwithstanding, its status as the key to 99% of my PS4 experiences. You don't mean "life" more eloquently than all of that.
I love mine and will continue to play it! So in that respect it still lIves!!!
OK?
They haven't really supported it for years, and I'll continue to play mine, so this doesn't mean much of anything to me.
Regardless, the Vita had the greatest d-pad Sony ever created. Suck clickety goodness made playing PS1 Classics such a joy. Will sure miss it. Glad I managed to buy 3 but wish i had bought one more of the newer versions.
I love my vita, its what I play the most these days as my wife and kids take up all the tvs. It's a shame it didn't do better and have more games but with remote play it will last for years to come
Love mine too. Actually been on it this afternoon.
A cracking little machine. I've had a lot of fun with my Vita — plenty of great games, and a fantastic way to play some PSone classics.
@Evil-C If you say so.
@AdamNovice I do. It's fascinating how laughable their product strategy was. You can't identify nuance between criticism between an individual product, vs. the company who made said product. This is the latter. Sony redefined the word bungled with their treatment of the vita.
Vita Means Life!
I will buy that red psvita.i still l💖ve my psvita.my favorite psvita game is killzone mercenary.word life.word up son
@Neolit The battery life on the Vita is crazy, I left my Vita at home when I went to the US (I know, I was dumb not taking it.) for almost two months and it still had enough charge to beat a boss in P4G when I came back.
I love it so much.
Rest in peace, the one PlayStation system I was never able to get.
@RawnDawn yeah it holds a battery pretty well which is one good feature about it.
They may have laid it to rest but I still play mine every week.
I love my Vita. My favourite handheld of all time. I just hope they support the eshop for a bit longer and also allow downloads of purchased games.
I still use my Vita's remote play when my missus is watching Celebrity Onion Peeling. Saying that I still use my hacked PSP to play Spectrum games on FusePSP
I always love seeing vita news being covered, even if its sad news. I still have years worth of games to play on mine. Currently near the end of Ys 8 and loving it 😁 vita means life
They need to port Soul Sacrifice, KZ Mercenaries, Freedom Wars and Oreshika to the PS4 quick.
sad day indeed... but i will declare the vita officially dead only once the servers go down. until then, the vita will live on (mostly for ps1 classics and psp games)!
7 year run is not bad, it's still my favourite portable psone machine
Been thinking about selling my Xbone and getting one. Probably have 50 games banked from ps plus so may finally pull the trigger.
@EVIL-C Outside the price of memory cards I don't think Sony could do a lot more. In the first few years the system had exclusive Uncharted, Assassin's Creeds, Call of Duties and Killzone games but none of them pushed the Vita into the kind of sales it should have. But people expected Sony to waste millions on a product that was already failing just to appease a small demographic, even though the PS4 was coming and that was far more important then the Vita was ever going to be.
@crazykcarter that would be awesome! Great idea, but like you said highly unlikely
I love my Vitas, OLED one is the best IMHO, I also have LCD and PSTV. Love all three
I will miss this console so much...
Editorialists of a French podcast about video games laughed at me when I asked them if they thought Sony would join the "Hybrid/second screen" route. I genuinely think they should. The PSP and the Vita proved that they had the means and the expertise. They need to offer this possibility to consumers, be that with a dedicated machine or at the very least an Xperia on steroid.
Vita + PS4, all I need for now and all I will need for years to come, playing games all across the generations.
@EVIL-C Nah, it was never going to sell. They could have thrown millions and millions and millions at it and they'd never have made the investment back.
Does anyone know how if they're still sold in the west for a decent price? I bought a psvita at launch and the battery has been getting worse for quite a while now. I can only play for an hour and a half and then I need to charge it again.
Everywhere I've looked, it seems quite expensive.
I lost my charger so mine has been dead for months.
I love my Vita. Its a shame I never really got the use out of it that it deserves. I bought a 32gig card and somehow lost the memory card. Really can't justify buying another card at the prices I see them. I may dust it off and try the new Toejam and Earl with remote play soon though.
@EVIL-C Yep. Crazy that they didn’t back their own machine. It’s a great bit of kit.
Persona 4 Golden became my favourite game of all time because of the Vita. That game is really special.
@EVIL-C Couldn't have said that any better!
Still playing the heck outta mine. Finishing up Muv-Luv Alternitive. What a story!!!
@naruball thats ashame about the battery life. I have used it almost daily since launch and i feel like my battery is as strong as day 1.
My vita is still my most played console. Currently i am 135hours in on rainbow skies. Hopefully i still get another 18months. Still a few more games on the backlog to play.
@stupidget
That sounds all kinds of awesome. I just completed Head Over Heels on my Nintendo DS the other week. Got any ZX recommendations?
@naruball I use a EasyAcc power bank.
I hope PS5 will also have a remote play option.
One of my favorite games of all time has to be terraria on my old vita. I own it now on ps4 but have never really played it. But maybe its because the selection of games to choose from is alot better on ps4...
I dont know, but i did enjoy the heck outta terraria at the time!
Inevitable but still sad to see, for me the Vita never really competed against the incredible 3DS but i did still really like it (especially that gorgeous OLED screen). Ironically i enjoyed using it for PSP and PS1 games more than its native games generally but it still had some gems like Gravity Rush and Tearaway, i just wish it had received dedicated entries for Ratchet & Clank, Syphon Filter, Ape Escape etc.
@Vorlon Thanks. I'll look it up.
@brendon987 I think it may have something to do with using it excessively over the years. I played Destiny of Spirits every day all day for a year to the point that I'd never turn it off. When the battery was about to die, I'd just charge it and play at the same time, which is bad for a device as far as I know. I ended up clocking 2000 hours in under a year.
I haven't heard others having similar issues, so I think buying a second one would be wise at this point. It's just a shame it's so expensive, especially in decent colours.
@Fandabidozi I’d head over to www.spectrumcomputing.co.uk and take a look and post on the forum. Nice bunch of spectrum nerds.
Good choice with Head over Heels. One of my all time favourite spectrum games.
Wasn't a Vita I owned but when I got my psp I played a game called Kingdom of Heaven I loved that game and finished it was a really good game. I didn't get round to finish FF 7 Crisis Core I was in the market for a PSP again but there now £50 + in good condition which o bought a new one a while back.
Rest in peace beautiful Vita. I loved you dearly. Other people shuned you for an inferior console cough 3ds cough they couldn't see that you had a better screen and nicer looking games. You were even easier to hold and didn't give me hand cramps. They claimed that you had no games yet games were being released years after they made these stupid factless statements. I loved you then as I do now. May you rest easy 😭
The Vita will reach a little over 6 million sales in Japan one the last shipment gets bought up more.
Added a video.
Still my favourite handheld console. Prefer it over my Switch and 3DS. And regarding my backlog, it's still perfectly alive. (:
Rest in piece Vita. You weren't my favorite portable but you had your gems and were a lovely piece of kit. If only your creator had made smarter decisions.
Still loving mine, hope to get a few more years out of it.
i'm actually enjoying my vita more at the moment than my switch - switch battery life is appalling so its kinda hard to enjoy on the go - so if your tethered to a wall socket why not play a proper console
@Tasuki
This is the post I was looking for.
@WillMerfi It's got nothing to do with being an "apologist" it was the reality of the situation. Companies stop support of products all the time when they know that consumer interest isn't there. Sega did with the Saturn, Nintendo with the Wii U and Sony with Vita so they can focus on another product that they can dedicate all their resources too.
@Scoobijohn That's the trouble with these products whether it be Switch or smartphones/tablets their great devices but companies don't put batteries in that last. In this day and age 10 hours battery life should be the bare minimum.
@WillMefi What? By telling you how the business actually works? I suppose your one of those that thinks companies should waste resources into a dying product even though it's in said company's interest to cut losses and try again another time.
@AdamNovice Many fans have completely unrealistic expectations and refuse to/don't understand how business works. Then again, it's much easier to complain that not enough is being done when it's someone else's money involved.
@naruball You should listen to football/soccer fans, to them there's not enough money in the world they want their clubs to spend on new players.
@AdamNovice I don't follow football, but yeah, It doesn't surprise me one bit.
Bought mine at launch and was pretty disappointed ever since. Had potential but for me the games were never quite there and the memory card prices just kiĺled even with ps pl us. Handheld haven't done it for me since the original game boy
I still fire the old boy up on occasions and it surprises me how beautifully crisp some games look on its small OLED screen.
I have fond memories of downloading an unheard of little game called Gravity Rush for free on the day I bought it, getting the platinum on MGS3 and of course, playing P4G.
@WillMerfi
Nobody owns the truth ; it simply is.
@Flopsy Wonderful game
@naruball Just as well, if you think k some gamers are bad, they've got nothing on football supporters
@get2sammyb I'm tempted to pick one up just to play that Resident Evil 2 and of course Persona 4
Still don't know why I ever got rid of it so come pay day I'll rectify that
shame but maybe it's for the best that they cut their losses with it.
altough it would be great if somehow those 2 vita uncharted games make their way to the main console someday.
never got to play them.
killed by sonys greed and stupid memory cards
Just picked up a Ps Vita, far better than the switch.
Enjoyed mine back in the day, but I haven't touched it since the Switch released.
I still love my vita. Also thanks to some great games I got for free from PS-Plus. Right now I’m playing Iconoclasts on it.
Hopefully they won’t stop supporting the e-shop for it anytime soon.
It's too bad Sony probably wont make another handheld Switch style. I'd kill to play my PS4 games (and general library) on a Playstation Swap. Oh well.
I like the PS Vita a lot - it was kind of the Switch before the Switch, in terms of high-quality mobile gaming and hybrid capability via the PS TV. It's also a backward-compatibility monster (supporting PS1 and PSP games) and grew into a terrific niche system for indie games, JRPGs, and even visual novels like Steins;Gate. I think it's worth buying a Vita just to play Persona 2/3/4 and Final Fantasy 8 on a handheld!! It also did video streaming via Netflix/Hulu/Crunchyroll. I wish the PS TV wasn't limited to 720p, and that all PS Vita games were officially supported. I would greatly prefer a PS Classic with PS TV functionality (maybe upgraded with CRT emulation for PS1 games and 1080p for video streaming) rather than what Sony actually delivered!!
Sadly (and like the PSP before it) the PS Vita suffered from expensive, proprietary memory cards and general abandonment by Sony. For now, it seems that Sony is happy to cede the hybrid/high quality handheld gaming console space to Nintendo, but since the Switch has shown that hybrid gaming can be a thing, maybe Sony will try it somehow with the PS5, hopefully with more success than PS Move had following the Wii (though Dreams might finally be a killer app for PS Move.)
@Gamer4Lyfe Hahaha. The Switch really is an improved successor in many ways, but I'll take the Vita for Final Fantasy 8 (as well as 1-10) FF Tactics, Persona 2/3P/4 Golden, more great PSP games like FF7 Crisis Core/MGS Peace Walker/Locoroco/Patapon, Gravity Rush, Uncharted, Tearaway, LittleBigPlanet, Super Stardust Delta, and that beautiful high-contrast OLED screen. The PS TV sips power, runs off a USB socket in your TV, and plays tons of PS1/PSP/Vita games from PSN as well as Vita cartridges.
I'll take the Switch for cheap high-capacity SD cards, Nintendo games, tabletop/portable multiplayer, 1080p on TVs, new games, and hopefully a hospitable home for the quirky indie and/or Japan developers who used to make games for the Vita. ;_;
Well that was fast - looks like Hulu discontinued PS Vita service today. It's no longer available in the PSN store.
I guess everything's going to stop working, like it has on the Wii.
Netflix and Crunchyroll are still on the PSN store though.
I still haven't touched my PS TV/Vita...maybe one day if I ever clear up my massive PS3/PS4/XB360/XB1/Wii/Wii U/Switch backlog.
@FX102A yes! I love playing fighting games with the responsive click! Tried moving onto PS4 when Blazblue stopped getting ported, and it's nearly unplayable for me with the absolutely abysmal dpad by comparison
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...