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SIE's Jim Ryan Indicates Sony Is No Longer in Handheld Business




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Aca Vuksa



Joined: 22 Mar 2018
Posts: 643
Location: Nis, Serbia
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:50 am Reply with quote
Sorry that Sony didn't manage to meet their expectations and allow Nintendo to win many fans for its amazing and its innovative of its handheld console. But i hope that PSP and PS Vita will be forever remember as something the fans who never know that Sony tried to compete with Nintendo for handheld wars.
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yuetheguardian



Joined: 10 Dec 2009
Posts: 65
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 9:06 am Reply with quote
Honestly Sony did this to themselves. I loved my ps vita despite all of the blocks Sony did to try to make sure people wouldn't. From proprietary memory cards that were prohibitively expensive to a complete lack of 1st party support after the launch window. There is a reason the only thing i could advertise my vita to froends is " ps vita it plays psone and psp games. Had Sony not left it to die i feel like vita could have found its niche like the psp. This isn't even talking about the other proprietary things like the charger which break super easy. To conclude I love my Playstation Vita. I just wish Sony had.
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Chii85



Joined: 10 Mar 2006
Posts: 145
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 9:40 am Reply with quote
Why are they doing that?
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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5500
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 10:52 am Reply with quote
It is a hufge shame, if the Vita did not have those very expensive proprietary memory cards and they had kept bringing games to it, it could have been really big. Because it is a really good system and it ironed out the issues with the PSP like cartridges instead of mini discs and 2 joysticks instead of that one tiny circle pad.
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Chrono1000





PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 11:46 am Reply with quote
Sony giving up on the handheld market makes sense but that is partly due to their own bad decisions. While the increasing capability of smartphones was a major change for mobile gaming it was Sony that made the Vita expensive, overly proprietary, and than censored visual novel games which were a reliable part of their market in Japan. Nintendo also made a brilliant move by competing in the higher end handheld market with the Nintendo Switch.
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4788
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 12:45 pm Reply with quote
In all these years I don't think I've ever met anyone personally who owned a Vita.
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yuetheguardian



Joined: 10 Dec 2009
Posts: 65
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 1:19 pm Reply with quote
Top Gun wrote:
In all these years I don't think I've ever met anyone personally who owned a Vita.

While you have not met me I was 2/10 vita owners. I owned a og vita and a ps vita tv. It was a great piece of hardware, I still prefer it over my 3ds. I feel like nintendo saw the things that succeeded with vita and used it for the switch.
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Firefly251



Joined: 14 Jul 2018
Posts: 367
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 2:43 pm Reply with quote
like psp, but not vita and i enjoyed my ds/3ds more than any console.
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DavetheUsher



Joined: 19 May 2014
Posts: 505
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:04 pm Reply with quote
No real reason to at this point. Sony is focusing more on the international market, which isn't into handhelds like Japan. And Nintendo has always sat on that throne.

PSP/Vita were great for lots of niche games like anime tie-ins and VNs, but the Switch fulfills that niche just fine these days. Besides, most of those Vita titles never saw a release in the west.
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Kami-koto



Joined: 14 Feb 2019
Posts: 66
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:06 pm Reply with quote
Loving my vita, but it was obvious Sony would fail for all the reasons people have written above.
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 6273
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 6:39 pm Reply with quote
yuetheguardian wrote:
There is a reason the only thing i could advertise my vita to froends is " ps vita it plays psone and psp games. Had Sony not left it to die i feel like vita could have found its niche like the psp.


PSP benefited massively from it being usable as a emulator.


yuetheguardian wrote:
This isn't even talking about the other proprietary things like the charger which break super easy.


Charger or charger cable?

Chrono1000 wrote:
Nintendo also made a brilliant move by competing in the higher end handheld market with the Nintendo Switch.


Which unfortunately is part of the reason many games run worse on the switch than they do on other systems.

DavetheUsher wrote:
No real reason to at this point. Sony is focusing more on the international market, which isn't into handhelds like Japan.


This is true to an extent but let's remember the Switch is part handheld in addition to tablet and smartphone gaming which of course can count as handheld gaming devices.
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AiddonValentine



Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 2340
PostPosted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 10:10 pm Reply with quote
MarshalBanana wrote:
It is a hufge shame, if the Vita did not have those very expensive proprietary memory cards and they had kept bringing games to it, it could have been really big. Because it is a really good system and it ironed out the issues with the PSP like cartridges instead of mini discs and 2 joysticks instead of that one tiny circle pad.


Those were a few issues with the systems, but I think the biggest thing was that Sony just never figured out what they wanted the system to be. It was the direct competitor to the DS, but they never really tried to make uniquely portable experiences, instead mostly just making stuff that would be more at home on a console. Seriously, where was Sony's answer to stuff like Pokemon?

Speaking of which, it also didn't help that Sony never really took their portable division all that seriously.Their 1st party teams NEVER made anything other than token efforts to support the system, instead leaving third parties to pick up the slack. Their real downfall was when they pissed off Capcom who then shacked up with Nintendo on Monster Hunter. Such wasted potential on Sony's part.
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rikku45



Joined: 08 Jul 2011
Posts: 109
PostPosted: Fri Dec 06, 2019 4:27 pm Reply with quote
My vita's left analogue stick died a year in, I never got it fixed because I could tell then that the vita was going nowhere. Sad
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jdnation



Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 2107
PostPosted: Sun Dec 08, 2019 6:24 pm Reply with quote
I was also very interested in a Vita, and loved my PSP. But there was no way I was going to shell out money on another proprietary memory card that added another $100 to the price.

The video game market right now is too competitive to support more than one system that requires two separate standards of development. People want content, and that's only going to grow more in the age of subscription services, and there's only so many studios and manpower to go around.

Sony made the right call to throw its support behind the PS4 and that has paid off.

Even Nintendo has come to this realization and this is why they have essentially combined their console and handheld divisions into one and have found success with their hybrid Switch console. But this naturally comes at the cost of lower specced hardware, whereas Sony's bread and butter is on more powerful cutting edge stuff.

Even Sony's VR efforts are still essentially rooted to support of their console, and in a sense VR support has taken over for what used to be the handheld division, but as an extended peripheral to the main console.

Here's hoping Sony can port many great PSP and Vita titles to PS4. Heck I'm sure many will come to the Switch as well. But the big markets nowadays are reliant on ecosystems of digital and subscription services, more easily delivered via the box console to your TV over a good internet connection at home than outside with any handheld.
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