Sony is to cease production of physical PS Vita games by the end of the fiscal year, at least in the European and American markets.
The European and American branches of Sony have confessed that they plan to stop producing physical game cartridges by the 31st of March 2019, although digital distribution, which makes use of Sony’s notoriously expensive proprietary memory cards, will continue.
Developers now have to submit all product code requests by the 28th of June 2018, and final purchase orders for physical cartridges have to be made by the 15th of February 2019. It may be worth noting that since this information comes from Sony’s European and American branches, there is the possibility that physical cartridges will still be made for the Japanese market, where the Vita is stronger.
Although not the final nail in the coffin, Sony’s decision seems to be a tacit admission that it is giving up on the Vita in the West, although many have suspected that this has been the case for a long time.
Without those proprietary memory cards and at least 32gigs of internal storage the Vita could have had a fighting chance. But it was basically crippled from the start to the point were I think Sony wanted it to fail hard so they would have an excuse to completely withdraw from the handheld business.
The third problem was that it was still expensive to develop for. Why make a VITA game when, for a few dollars more, you could make a PS3 game which had a far larger install base (obviously, since the VITA was new and untested). So many games on the DS/3DS would never’ve been made if it had been more expensive to develop for, for example. Yeah, the VITA is awesome… but it just had too much going against it, and it was ALL Sony’s fault. And I doubt they’ll try again.
That’s just it. if you want to go digital when Sony have their decent sales you’re left spending a s♥♥t load of money on their expensive memory cards. I’ve picked up 2 x 32gb cards and have 2 x 16gb ones. I felt stupid for doing this but I was buying them as and when they filled up.
The fact that they ditched the HDMI port at the last moment and never thought to include multiplayer dualshock support didn’t help either. Had they included those two features, it could have served as the ultimate portable platform long before Switch came into existence.
Consumers learned from the last one; they it was always going to be a ‘handheld’ with the majority of the games released being better suited for or ports of console games, had the beancounters not taken away that support, it would have had a better chance.
Looking back on it, Vita games were either one of two things: VNs or moeshit. On the other hand, phones haven’t been much better. Gacha trash or, well, gacha trash. Why Sony would want to completely focus on that already saturated, played out market is incomprehensible.
Thus far, Switch has been diverse enough to hold my interest. I’d like to see more third party devs, but it doesn’t have to happen immediately.
Mmm.. yes, why would they want a piece of the pie?
Fighting with the Nintendo die hards is always a loosing battle, but the PSP was far from a “failure” just because you didn’t buy it…
So many exclusives that people sunk half their lives into that aren’t really given a f♥♥k about in the west like Monster Hunter and the like (be honest)
“just because you didn’t buy it”
I’ve owned two PSPs and a DS, fuckboi. And yes, the PSP was not a success, but it was not the disaster Vita was. Learn to read.
Man it was selling just fine for 7 years. Fail hard, yeah.
No it wasn’t. The PSP destroyed its sales in the same period of time. The PSP had a reported 82 million consoles sold, the Vita is at around 15-18 million lifetime. It bombed.
Selling fine? No, it never ‘sold fine’ outside japan.
No one eve gave a f♥♥k about selling it outside Japan. its’ Japanese console for Japanese people.
I hope you realize that you are a stupid c♥♥t because all playstation products are developed in America by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
“No one eve gave a f♥♥k about selling it outside Japan.”
Sony & Nintendo would say otherwise, yellow dick loving weeaboo.
“its’ Japanese console for Japanese people.”
Japanese CONSOLE market is DEAD, you stupid f♥♥k.
So many Vita games being ported to PC now may as well just stop and skip to PC.
Yup that was the main problem before the major PC ports, the Vita was literally a portable PS3, everything the Vita had the PS3/PS4 were much better. Just didn’t have enough exclusives to appeal it. Cross play was its weak advertisement.
Are you retarded it’s a portable, it doesn’t matter if a non portable system has the games because it’s still for portable gaming moron.
Do you mean tablet with Windows on it isn’t portable?
Translation: more moeshit and VNs with DRM on Steam, which we already have in abundance
This was bound to happen considering Nintendo Switch has a lot of better game and better processor than the Vita which I wanted to tell Sony to just stop on creating portable console so that people would stop buying a different type of portable console.
First off the switch just came out and the vita is like 5 years old so that’s like comparing it to a 360. Second you sound stupid because the switch still has like 30 games because it’s like a year old and has no back catalog. Third take Nintendo’s dick out of your mouth it’s been in too many of you fan boys for you not to catch something.
I learned my lesson with the original fat PSP. Not gonna buy one again.
I thought they already did that.