Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Senior Vice President Hiroyuki Oda announced the ending of production on the portable platform back in 2018, and fans across the globe will now be left with little recourse, as the lifespan of the console is sure to end shortly. And with Japan being the biggest market for the Vita and its library of titles, a full end to production for all markets isn’t a good sign.
It wasn’t hard to see this end coming a long way off though. The platform was released as a the successor to the PSP in December 2011, touting much-improved graphics and an expanded features list, including compatibility with the short lives Playstation TV, but it never gained the traction Sony needed from it. The company tried to release several revisions of the platform, but it largely floundered outside of Japan. It was still successful though, shifting 80 million units, eclipsing the sales of hardware for the GBA but; the actual competitor to the Vita, the 3DS, outsold the platform by nearly double even before the Vita launched.
Titles continued to be minted for the platform into 2019, but western markets had largely forgotten about the Vita by the time the announcement last year was made. The only thing really keeping the Vita alive in the west was a mix of indie games releases for the console, but with a series of cancellations, the fate of the platform was sealed.
And considering the dominance of the Switch combined with the oncoming focus on the next generation of Playstation consoles, it’s highly unlikely that Sony will produce another handheld anytime soon. The portable console will continue for a short time in Japan, but the days of seeing new games or consoles in the west are effectively over.
Source: Sony Interactive Entertainment via Game’s Talk
