Former Sony boss wishes Sony had supported the Vita more

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/former-playstation-us-boss-wishes-sony-had-supported-vita-more/

The handheld system launched in 2011 as the successor to the PSP and is thought to have sold less than 15 million units prior to its discontinuation in 2019.

In a new interview with Axios, Tretton name checked Vita as one of several PlayStation technologies he felt had been “orphaned a little bit” by parent company Sony.

“There were certainly technologies that I thought were good but just didn’t have the level of support they needed,” he said, also citing 3D gaming and PlayStation VR, which didn’t launch until after he left the company in 2014.

Being a successful part of a big corporation sometimes meant having to make sacrifices when other parts of the business weren’t performing so well, Tretton said.

“So, you come up with new technology to introduce to the industry and the consumers. But do you have the marketing budget to really drive the message? Do you have the developer support dollars to incent them to develop games to support this initiative? And sometimes you would birth technology and hope that it caught on.”

Speaking to IGN about Vita’s fate in 2017, Tretton said Sony thought the product was too late to come to market.

“Now that I don’t work there anymore, I think internally it was: ‘This is a great machine, it’s just too late.’ The world has shifted to portable devices that aren’t dedicated gaming machines,” he said.

“And I think PSP was incredibly successful. I loved what it did, and I thought it brought a console-like experience and brought genres to an older gamer that typically didn’t have console-like games to play on a portable platform.

“But Vita was a nice machine at a time when very few people felt they needed a dedicated portable device.”

The Vita, easily one of the best portable gaming hardware of all time. Sony did deliver classics like Tearaway, Killzone Mercenary, Gravity Rush, Uncharted, and more. We also got classics like Persona 4 Golden which everyone has been port begging since the dawn of time. In some ways, the Vita was like the Dreamcast. But do you agree with what Jack is saying, SW? That Vita just came at the wrong time? Or could Sony have saved it?

Me too.

I think game companies gave up on handhelds much too easily. They conceded the victory to smart phones without much of a fight. At present, I carry a smart phone, but I also carry a handheld gaming device that is roughly the size of a GBA. Gaming on smart phones sucks, and it's easier to carry a handheld then those stupid controller attachments that work like shit anyway. If Sony made a handheld like the Vita and gave it the ability to make and receive calls, I'd use it over both devices I carry now, easily.

Vitas life was drastically undercut by sonys lack of support, but I'd also argue that the system got better as it went on... Eventually it had an amazing library, (a fantastic legacy library too!) and relevant indie games were cross buy with other Sony platforms.... I was playing more vita than anything else during those days. Loved it!

Also, go play Titan Souls if you haven't. Great concept, white knuckle gameplay. It was awesome on vita.

Vita was even a better handheld than the Steam Deck. 😜

Sony did the same thing to VR, they just let third party invest into it. Sony dont hardly support anything. They released 1 game so far this year. Meanwhile Nintendo released like 5.

The vita was trash. I owned one for an year then sold it. Actually it was a wierd console because I didn't want to sell it, and at the same time I did. The hardware was so fantastic I didn't want to sell but the library and support from sony or any developer was non existent. In the end I sold it but to this day I felt half regret over it. Wierd.

The 3ds completely trashed the vita when it came out. They had hit after hit after hit.

You had it for a year? The Vita was in production for at least 7 years. So you barely got to play it.

Damn! It sold and supported worse than original Xbox.

@SolidGame_basic: by the time I sold it, it was common knowledge that sony wouldn't support it anymore. The vita was the fastest that any manufacturer dropped support for in history of consumer consoles. I guess on paper they were supporting it, but sony really took a massive dump on it. Anyone who says otherwise is just painting a very rosy picture, and massive revisionist history, I think they moved to some play ps4 games on your vita gimmick. It was a real shame too, after how amazing the og psp was.

I dont know what happened over the years, but I hear it has a great indie support. It's good the vita fans weren't completely abandoned. Shame on sony. Even the massive flop that was the wii u had more years support from nintendo.

Nintendo snuffed the life out of the Vita preemptively by securing Monster Hunter from Capcom.

Some might not recall but psp was dead in the water itself until Capcom dropped MH on it and gave both Psp and MH new life.

It literally became a Monster Hunter machine, outside of vns that sold like plastic bottle caps.

Vita had no MH so Vita had no hope.

It's Sony's fault for allowing their inhouse studios to treat it as if the handheld ghetto was real.

Nintendo isn't perfect but they never half-assed their efforts, whether home console or portable.

Yeah, it was a real shame how Sony handled the Vita. I didn’t particularly care for the PSP because it used discs but was quite keen on the Vita with it using cards. Never did get around to getting one though.

While true, whose fault was it that he didn't find enough compelling titles which justified continued ownership?

I had it even less than a year and mine was sold when I still received what I paid. TBH it was more of an impulse buy. What I did play on it wasn't great. Vita tried to mimic 3ds in certain respects but failed. On many boards did people claim the superior power and performance would de-throne Nintendo as king of the hand held consoles but they were forced to eat crow.

Vita may turn out like Wii U in that many people discovered worthy things to play years after its demise.

Nintendo is a tough one to scratch in the handheld market, and while the PSP did quite well for its time, Vita seemed dead on arrival because Sony didn't seem to know what it wanted to do with the machine, while Nintendo was just doing their thing and putting in the effort to build up the 3DS.

I also remember at the time much of the industry believed the handheld market was defeated by mobile gaming. It's a shame Sony wasn't more competitive with the console, because it was a pretty cool piece, and I think that's what this ex-boss is saying that the Vita never found its fullest potential.

@Archangel3371: "I didn’t particularly care for the PSP because it used discs "

You can download games too.

@PSP107: Oh yeah, I know.

Dedicated handheld devices are totally dead by now, but hybrid handhelds like the Switch are here to stay. I seriously hope that Sony will release a Switch-like hybrid. It would make sense now since they own more studios nowadays, they own Crunchyroll anime service, plus the new subscription for for PS+ can allow PS1 and PSP game downloads, which would easily work on the Vita 2

@SolidGame_basic: it did a lot right... More than wrong actually, all things considered... But vita is no steam deck...

By the way, my steam deck is a few stops away from being delivered. I'm mome ts away from the best pieces of hardware this gen buddy!

It's rather amazing even long Sony was pulling their support from it just how much life third parties provided it in Japan.

They weren't going to try to steer the ship back on course once the PS4 was an absolute success.

Tbh, it's a shame it lost a lot of support before the GaaS boom because it would have been cool to see Fortnite, Apex etc on it.

It was literally the best handheld of all time, hardware wise. Sony screwed up by not giving it the library it deserved. Plus charging an arm and leg for their proprietary memory cards.

"“But Vita was a nice machine at a time when very few people felt they needed a dedicated portable device.”"

Is that why Sony dumped it? They're so pathetic. They release products into the wild to see if they support themselves before jumping on their OWN bandwagon. Sony didn't push the Vita and then complained when it wasn't doing well enough.

Go ask Nintendo how well a "dedicated portable device" can do. Sony are such lazy bastards.

Even with the PS5. Sony aren't really pushing it, or actively reacting to the competition, they're just happy for it to ride that PS4 brand power. It is LAZY.

And they've always done this. Same with eyetoy, move, they're barely pushing their own PSVR.

Say what you want about Kinect on the Xbox 360, MS pushed that hard and made it successful.

It's this passive mentality that is going to allow the competition to flourish. While Sony have been passive, they've allowed MS to lay down a solid plan which is starting to come to fruition.

the sd card issue. was half of the whole ps vita issue itself.

@HalcyonScarlet: There's so much stupid fanboy bs in your post it's amazing you dont win an award for it.

Let's just take on tiny bit of your nonsense, in what world was the Kinect a success? 🤣 Yes MS pushed it hard, forcing people to own it (saying it was part of the Xone and you couldn't just flip a switch to off and remove it...something they actually did then lol) and it failed miserably both times. How many people do you know that look back at Kinect with fond memories? 🤔None, that's how many.

It was called PS Vita but it died a quick and forgettable death. Leave it to Sony fannies to have an alternative recollection. 😂

Kinect sales reach 24 million February 2013

@eoten: I said the same before it even launched. They should've used the sliding screen prototype, and it should've been a phone as well.

THIS⤴️

Just like @eoten said, making it a phone would all but guarantee you picking that over carrying a phone and a dedicated handheld. The overly expensive memory cards were a major factor as well, but I also think it's OS should've been Android based. That way you would have access to mobile games, but also to simple emulators. If the Vita launched with those capabilities, it would've sold like hotcakes!

@Pedro: Because it was packaged in with consoles 🤣. My in-laws bought my boy a 360 with kinnect not long after it came out because the hype made it sound really interesting, but it was absolute garbage that barely functioned and definitely didn't work as it was supposed to. Again if it was a success, where's the newest version for the series X/S, where's the fond memories for it? It was a total failure for Ms, twice over.

@dimebag667: Adding phone functionality to it would have just increased the price and decreased sales even more so. Sony needed to market it more, gave it more unique vita only games, and let any sd card work with it and not just their priority ones.

@vfighter: Maybe, but how much would it actually cost to add phone functionality? They already had a 3G model for $300, so I doubt adding the capability would be that expensive. Plus, at the time, 2 year contracts were pretty much a given, so it could've easily been subsidized like that. But I've also never produced a cellphone, so I don't really know.

Wow is Sony admitting their incompetence on this one? This new Sony will be better if they continue doing this. Hopefully, they take action.

They had the potential to move the market in an overall beneficial direction, but they instead squandered it away trying to milk their customers, all while reducing support for the Vita. Now Valve is stepping in and filling the void -- a little bit Nintendo as well.

I enjoyed the Vita more than the PS3. The cross-buy/play/save was a real nice touch, though.

The Vita might be my favorite PlayStation hardware. It figures they wouldn’t support it 🙄

The problem here is that as game development costs spiral upwards, studios and publishers have to specialise. You can do low cost, high margin mobile games and do high cost, relatively lower margin AAA games. PSP/PSV games are smack in the middle of this; too high cost to be offloaded to some small side project teams, too low margin to be worth dedicating proper resources to. This is why as time went by we saw more and more ports and indies instead of proper system sellers.

So supporting the Vita was easier said than done. I think it was inevitable that Sony was going to go back to focusing on only one device.

So the only way to buy an Xbox 360 was with Kinect? A bit try hard.

"360 with kinnect not long after it came out because the hype made it sound really interesting"

Now you're contradicting yourself. :-S

So did it sell well because no one had a choice in buying it like Wii Sports or was it "because the hype made it sound really interesting"?

Even your anecdotal evidence is falling flat there.

"It was a total failure for Ms" Clearly not considering they attempted it a second time. It did fail the second time. Kind of reminds me of the PSP and then Vita. Sony were so ashamed of the Vita they just gave up supporting it. But "where's the newest version?" and "where's the fond memories for it?", if we are basing it on your metric for success.

Aww i miss my vita :(.

He is right: sony should have supported it more. That was the biggest issue. As far as sony were concerned the Vita was a second class citizen. They would have their best developers work with a lot of resources on PS3 games but would pawn off vita development to external houses generally. they had 4 games made by in house devs over its life (Tearaway, gravity rush, Killzone and Wipeout). They didnt try to make handheld games either (games were you can play it in quick bursts and still make progress). They lost Monster Hunter to nintendo (MH 4 as a vita exclusive could have been a nice system seller. MH would sing on the vita back then. a perfect portable device for such a game).

Sure Mobile gaming was getting much bigger and the vita was never going to outsell phones, but Nintendo did just fine with the 3DS in the end and the switch is basically the Nintendo Vita.

Sony did great on the hardware but just screwed up on the support side. Any device needs to have the content to earn the sales at the end of the day.

I still think they should take another crack at it. Make a Playstation phone. The phone industry is creatively dead and ripe for disruption. A proper gaming phone properly backed by Sony themselves could be a very interesting proposition. Hardware wise they have the expertise to do it. Even software wise they have a good base to work from (The Vita OS was great. one of the great portable UIs too).

They should release a handheld PS4.... I know I'd be willing to buy more games from the PS Store if I had the option to play them on the go. (It should also support Vita and PSP games... already in fantasy land so why not)

Tons of people will have a decent sized digital library already - combined with their new tiers service it would be very appealing.

Been saying the same for MS too for quite sometime but with xCloud it may not make as much sense for them.

People here tend to forget that the reason why the Vita failed is due to that ridiculous Memory sticks is what brought the system down in the first place! Given many games wouldn't even start without one of those expensive memory cards as well, it launched on entirely the wrong foot and never really recovered. When the Slim Vita came out, it seemed a shoo-in that they'd move to MicroSD to try and salvage things, but no... Sony does love its proprietary formats.

Sony's actual support was garbage past the first 6 months or so. They made some great games for it, like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Killzone: Mercenary, Gravity Daze, (Rush), and Soul Sacrifice that really showed how much potential the system had, then.... almost nothing. It's asinine! The marketing for it was terrible. Commercials barely existed, from before launch and all throughout its life. The PSP is one of the most successful Sony handheld systems of all time and I love it!

All in all, it was those overpriced memory cards that nobody wanted to shell out and when that happened, Sony didn't put any efforts into lowering them for that matter until it was too late,

Just Play Persona 4 on emulators barring the new 1 month leading up to ski event (which u barely have control), the Junes concert scene and random online help there barely any changes made in the Golden edition.

@davillain: Soul Sacrifice and Freedom wars literally the best monster Hunter clone ever made, probably even surpassed it. Too bad sony killed the vita with the expensive as fk memory.

Your argument is that 24 million units sold for a peripheral is not a success?🤔

I love my Vita! I might play Power Stone this weekend. I wish it got the support that the PSP got.

I’m imagining if it got its very own GTA, Kingdom Hearts or Metal Gear game made from the ground up. Hell, Tekken would have been awesome.

I really do not understand why Sony requires the use of its proprietary Memory Sticks on the PlayStation Vita, just like why it required these same Memory Sticks on its digital cameras.

Nintendo handheld systems used SD cards and so do the Switch (which has a MicroSD card slot), why not the PlayStation Vita?

The memory sticks were a massive stumbling block for the consoles success. Micro SD cards would have been the way to go looking at the switch's sales. The vita had a pretty good line up the first couple of years and looked an interesting system but poor sales obviously made Sony pull the plug very early on.

It was clearly better from a technical perspective than the 3DS. Not even close really, the OLED screen was a thing of beauty and made colors pop compared to the washed out colors on the 3DS that you'd constantly have to hold at the right angle for that 3D effect (sometimes I would just slide the 3D effect off because of the annoyance).

Sony gave up on it pretty damn fast, although I'm not sure if they committed to another wave of games would have made much difference to the position of the console. Investment and ROI terms, Sony probably made the correct call. I mean, people already weren't buying it even when Sony was still supporting it...

When you look back at it as a historical system, it would be nice to have had a few more "1st party" games (or something like an exclusive Castlevania or MGS or Grand Theft Auto) to highlight on it's top 20 games list. As it stands you might struggle to get a list of 20 great games on there without throwing in a few indie PC games and shovelware type JRPG that became the standard for the system. The 3DS probably wasn't as great as prior gens either in terms of volume of original classic games (lots of ports!), but it was still multiple times better than Vita because at least it had 1st party support pretty much all the way through.

Love my Vita and I still play it to this day. I'm always playing Tekken 6, The Power Stone Collection, Ys Origins, Tearaway, Freedom Wars, Wipeout 2048, The Legend of Dragoon, Xenogears, Parasite Eve, FFX, World of Final Fantasy, Attack On Titan, Chrono Trigger/Cross, etc the list goes on lol

Sony dropped the ball on the memory sticks. I will say there is a hack/mod to use the game game slot for micro SD. I use it for a 250GB micro sd card and play all my classics on the thing.