wakkawakka

(I'm late to this article, so no one will probably read this comment, but whatever)

It's interesting to have my feelings confirmed by this AMA. You can check my post history and see I used to tell people that Sony had abandoned the platform pretty much immediately after launch. They had the first wave of software greenlit and when that came out, they were out. IIRC, SIEA straight up stopped running TV commercials for the platform entirely after the 2012 holiday season. Literally, zero platform-specific ads after its first holiday season. I got a lot of pushback from people, who I guess just didn't want to see the writing on the wall.

The price of memory cards was definitely part of the platform's failure, but IMO, the biggest issue is that the mainstream software was never there. Uncharted wasn't Sony's biggest IP in 2011. Gran Turismo still was. Guess what? Vita is the only PlayStation platform without an entry developed for it. In hindsight, it's kind of insane, too. The PSP game sold 4.7 million units and never got a follow-up of any kind. There was never any kind of Monster Hunter (no, an ancient MMO port doesn't count) or Grand Theft Auto games on it. The Call of Duty game on Vita was a reskin developed by a C-list studio in 6-months. The commitment to creating the kind of games that would propel the platform to widespread success just wasn't there. Minecraft should've been a big coup, but it came too late for the western Sony branches to care about pushing the platform.

Even in Japan, the same was true. I already mentioned Monster Hunter because it was the most egregious omission (Monster Hunter Portable 3rd sold 4.8 million units on PSP in Japan alone), but think about PES, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Yakuza and the other franchises that either had a very limited presence on the platform or were completely MIA. These were all big sellers on PSP. Minecraft on Vita became a huge sleeper hit in that market. But they squandered its potential by never really following it up with more kid-focused software. Sure, there was Dragon Quest Builders (no port of DQXI, of course) but little else.

In 2016, a Talking Point column written by Sammy advocated for the removal of Vita and PS3 games from PS+ under the belief that it would improve PS4 offerings. How the tables have turned ...

It's almost like a massive billion dollar company who treated some of its fans like trash shouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt.

@manu0 Name a Vita version of a multi-plat that Atlus USA has skipped on.

I don't know if it'll get a physical release, but I feel confident in saying at the very least a PSN-only version is coming.

@BAMozzy PS4's install base in Japan isn't very large. We're talking like 5 million-ish. There are plenty of people there that haven't bought one and yet Switch will eclipse its total sales in that market easily. Japan's gaming scene is still dominated by lower-budgeted productions, which Switch is capable of delivering on. There is no doubt in my mind that Switch is taking sales from PS4 in that market.

I don't know why people are pretending Switch isn't impacting PS4 sales. Do you not see how badly PS4 is getting overlapped by Switch in Japan? Switch will outsell PS4's total install base in that market within 2 years - probably less. It doesn't even have an original Monster Hunter, Dragon Quest, Animal Crossing, Pokemon or Yo-Kai Watch game yet.

Sony is in an unenvious position. Apple, Google, Microsoft and Nintendo are letting people experience their products in multiple form factors. Sony's only got PS4, a home device, and a lacklustre streaming feature that the mainstream isn't really aware of.

@Flaming_Kaiser Japan is the main market for this game. Elsewhere, the title is so low key it's not even getting a physical release. Let's be honest, PSVR does not sell well ... anywhere.

@Derpie1 3DS is six years old and has a successor on the market.

No Heroes Allowed! VR giga bombed compared to the earlier games. Sony sure made a good decision abandoning handheld for virtual reality peripherals ...

Two years ago I said if NX would be able to run PS4 ports that PS4 (and the PlayStation brand by extension) would be a goner in Japan. It looks like my prediction is turning out to be true. Nintendo hasn't solved their stock problems, or even gotten a real Monster Hunter or Pokemon game on the thing yet. I'd say things are looking awfully grim for PS5 in Japan.

@adf86 Seems like an online mode for Gravity Rush 2 was too ambitious amirite.

Funny thing is, almost all of the reviews for GR2 dock it for being a big bloated game. Had it been designed for a lower spec platform, not only would it have come out earlier (the original Vita oriented version of GR2 was showcased at TGS 2013), been cheaper to develop, it probably would've been better. It might have even sold better (at least relative to its budget) since GR2 would've been one of the last first party Vita games and it would've been a big release for the platform. Instead, it became an entry in the PS4 list wars no one bought.

I would've bought it if they had released the game on Vita like they originally were going to. I will never reward Sony abandoning that platform.

@whywai88 You should read the Japanese forums. There's tonnes of comments fearful of a "Vita withdrawal from the market." Famitsu even ran a prediction last December that said Sony would no longer make handhelds (which Yoshita himself has confirmed). Sony opening a Japanese studio to make phones games while they haven't shipped an original Japanese Vita game since July 2014 only builds that concern.

@themcnoisy There's still doom and gloom about one of those and it was entirely brought on by the company that made it.

Sony is a terrible company. If any of these are free-to-play games that always need to connect to a server, don't bother. They'll shut it down if it doesn't generated millions of dollars a day. Just ask Destiny of Spirits players who spend hundreds or thousands only to have Sony render it all useless in a year.

You know Sammy, if you don't want weirdos harassing you on Twitter for allegedly slighting their platform of choice, you probably shouldn't refer to it as a last gen platform (when it has no successor) that Sony should support even less.

Gundam Breaker 3 actually sold better on Vita. Gematsu made a typo.

That's just him being nice. Naughty Dog doesn't like the game. They had Bend cancel the sequel.

@ShogunRok Yeah, like Sword Art Online, that game that sold so poorly on Vita it was the #1 downloaded title for the platform in North America last year. The game sold so poorly that its western results shocked Bandai Namco and its production staff. It sold so poorly that Bandai Namco could justify retranslating it for a PS4 port no one asked for. If it wasn't for PS4 no Vita games would ever exist. Literally no one buys Vita games. No one.

You'd think someone with a Zechs avatar would know better given BNGI just announced an English release for the Vita exclusive Gundam Extreme VS-Force.

Bandai Namco's western divisions treat Vita like garbage (following Sony's lead, I guess). If a game is exclusive to Vita in Japan they'll only release it in the west if they can port it to PS4, even if it would have sold fine on Vita over here. Tales of Innocence R? No localization. God Eater 2: Rage Burst (this even has a PS4 version)? No localization. Inserting the non-Google Translate SAO script into the Vita version? Ha, no. Dragon Ball Xenoverse? No Vita version [or even Remote Play]. Naruto Anything? No Vita version. The western divisions can justify random Xbox and PC versions, though! It's not as bad as it once was, since at least now they're not skipping the Vita versions of localized games like they used to with Dynasty Warriors Gundam and One Piece: PW2. However, given how they are, who knows how long that'll last.

_{Watch the language -Tasuki-}

Except the arcade games have the ugliest character art.

English release confirmed: https://twitter.com/PlayStationAsia/status/644050304997036032

@Link41x In Japan, sure, but their western divisions like to pretend Vita doesn't exist.

0 mention that they are localizing a Gundam game for Vita in Asia... I guess you can't fellate PS4 if you mention games that don't exist on it.

@get2sammyb It would work well if the goal is for Sony to lose money and kill the series. Games like Freedom Wars (and Monster Hunter) aren't popular on home consoles. We have over a decade of proof of that. Sony tried migrating that audience to PS4 by paying third parties and it has failed spectacularly:
[PSV] Toukiden Kiwami - 165,000 units in Japan
[PSP] Toukiden Kiwami - 34,000 units in Japan
[PS4] Toukiden Kiwami - 6000 units in Japan

PSP had been discontinued in Japan by the time Kiwami came out. Pretty pathetic for PS4 to not even muster that.

This game is made by Shift, one of the studios behind Freedom Wars:
[PSV] God Eater 2: Rage Burst - 335,000 units in Japan
[PS4] God Eater 2: Rage Burst - 47,000 units in Japan

Sony is reaping what they sowed. They killed off their handhelds and told those consumers to screw off. Given Japan is a handheld market that was a very unwise decision. Expect PS4 to be completely dead in Japan if NX is a handheld capable of receiving PS4 ports like DQXI and FFXIV imply.

Knowing Sony, I'm certain 95% of the games featured will be on PS4 with the Vita versions having been given the least amount of attention possible. They'll be developed by the studio mascot, Chim-Chim the golden retriever, within a span of a fortnight and subsequently run at the resolution of a postage stamp at a frame rate measured in single digits.

Sony wants Vita dead, even in Japan. They only care about PS4, even in regions where it makes total sense to support Vita, more so than PS4. They deserve to become irrelevant in the Japanese market.

@Gamer83 Bend is working on a PS4 game now. It's clear that Sony is done supporting Vita. This interview only supports that, as there are multiple mentions to unannounced PS4 projects, when everything Vita related is public knowledge.

The big Vita IP he's talking about is Freedom Wars. It was in the sentence before what Gematsu quoted.

@Lionhart Sony Santa Monica isn't going to even touch Vita. The only handheld game they developed was some NeoPets game years ago. The two PSP God of War games were made by Ready At Dawn, who are working on The Order.

@Legendaryboss How did I push the goal posts? You said Bend could be developing for both platforms, and I gave reasons as to why that was highly unlikely to happen.

You then said that a platform is only truly dead when it's discontinued and I provided reasons as to why that could be a likely scene to play out with Vita. This is an English site, so the efforts made by SCEJA won't ever be appreciated when all of the support they can muster are games that only sell in their region. The United States of America happens to be the largest single market for video games in the world. It also happens to be the country that houses the development studio that this article is devoted to. When you don't advertise the platform at all, nor announce any games developed to appeal to that market you've given up and that is clearly what Sony has done.

@Legendaryboss I don't know what to believe, a job listing from over a year ago, or a comment for SCE's head of Worldwide Studios from Thursday. It's not like this industry quietly cancels games all the tim... oh wait, they do.

If Bend were working on a Vita game it would've been announced by now. They shipped Uncharted: Golden Abyss back in late 2011 to meet Vita's Japanese launch. Your comment about Tearaway is a bit misguided given that project was publicly announced a year into development, and has a smaller scope than anything Bend has done before. We would know what their next Vita game is by now if it existed.

SCE's western support for Vita is done. SCEA didn't advertise the platform at all this year, and gave it about as much time at E3 as they devoted to direct digs at Microsoft. Conversely, they've announced zero big western internally development projects for the platform. They've taken a huge **** on the userbase that probably is made up of their most devoted users.

@Legendaryboss Bend is about 60 people. They cannot do both. This is the end for Vita. SCE owned two handheld dedicated studios. They shut one of them down, and now the other is making console games.

Sony owns Gran Turismo. PS4 sales are currently at 0. Do you think a Gran Turismo game isn't in development for that platform? The fact that Vita doesn't have a GT is as big an indictment of Sony not caring about this platform than anything else.

@Legendaryboss Congrats, you've listed pretty much every third party game announced for western release. That entire list combined probably won't even sell a million units in the west, which shows how great support really is.

As for those Sony published games, did you miss the part where I said western studios? I never knew Gravity Rush 2 (which isn't confirmed for Vita btw), Soul Sacrifice Delta, and Freedom Wars were western titles. The actual western stuff you mentioned is either trash like Vita Pets, or ports like Borderlands. Amazing support. Sony will sell 30 million Vitas with that lineup.

I would sell my Vita, but if you haven't noticed, because of Sony's poor treatment of the platform resale prices are incredibly low. I made the mistake of buying a Vita at launch, so I'd be taking a gigantic bath trying to sell it.

Ubisoft reported that Rayman Legends sold poorly across all platforms. In fact, in North America the Wii U version sold the best which should tell you something. I guess the poor sales explain why Ubisoft has not patched in the missing content from the Vita version.

You know what I expected Vita to be? A successor to the PSP. Big and exclusive games from Rockstar, Capcom, Square Enix, Konami, alongside quality new IPs and console spinoffs from Sony. What I've gotten is an landfill for late indie ports.

@ajaychitown Is this a joke? Did you watch their E3 presentation where they spent a grand total of about 5 minutes on the entire platform to announce ports of years old PS3 games and nothing else? Did you watch their Gamescom presentation where everything was either available on PS3/PS4 or as inconsequential as Big Fest, and Murasaki Baby? The only place they didn't just give the platform lipservice was at TGS, and even then the majority of the content announced was shared with PS3 or PS4. The examples you listed are hilarious. Killzone? That game came out last month, and was announced in 2011. LittleBigPlanet? That came out last year, with LBP Hub being a PS3-only thing. Ratchet & Clank? Are you referring to the abysmal port of Full Frontal Assault? The one that runs at subnative resolution, and struggles to hit even 15fps? If you are, you should know that's one of the worst ports released by a first party, and came out months ago. I know you're not referring to Into the Nexus, because that's a PS3 exclusive too.

The fact of the matter is that Vita's situation is abysmal. It has pretty much 0 third party support, and first party support from their western studios will hit 0 once Tearaway launches. It has next to nothing in regards to third party support because sales are horrific, and if Sony's not making any games for it that won't change. Bend Studio making a PS4 game is pretty much an indication of Sony throwing in the towel as far as the west is concerned. Bend have been handheld exclusive for nearly 10 years now. They were so integral to the handheld side of Sony that when third parties were having issues with developing PSP games Bend would often help out. I guess that's not needed though, since the only people in the west making Vita games are indies who aren't exactly pushing the hardware.

@Lelouch This is an English site. You know how many of those games have been announced for western release? ZERO. Besides that, none of those games would've been made by SCE Bend, nor would any of those games replace whatever it is they're working on.