Entertainment
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William D’Angelo
, posted 17 hours ago / 1,694 Views
The former President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida in an interview with Kinda Funny discussed the different reasons as to why the PlayStation Vita failed.
“Several technical choices we made as a company didn’t really [turn out as] good ones, one of which was dedicated memory cards: you had to purchase a proprietary memory card [and] that was a mistake, [because] people had to spend more money to get a memory card,” said Yoshida (via VideoGamesChronicle).
He added, “The back touchpad was not necessary. Teams made amazing prototypes that felt so good, that misled everyone involved that it would be great. But the back touch was not, and it added additional cost to the hardware.”
Yoshida revealed a video out was originally going to be in the handheld, however, that ended up being cut in order to save money.
The one feature the team had in the development hardware dev kit for Vita was a video out, so developers could connect to a screen to develop games on,” he said. “Somehow, the hardware team decided to take this feature out of the consumer unit… just to save a few cents of cost from the hardware.”
The main reason as to why the PS Vita failed is due to Sony having to develop for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita at the same time. In the end Sony focused on the PS4.
“I think the biggest reason Vita didn’t do as well as we had hoped was we had to split all our efforts and resources into two different platforms,” said Yoshida. “We didn’t have that resource.
“So for PS3 and PS Vita, and PS4 and PS Vita, studios had to decide which thing to work on, and we didn’t have that big a talent pool to be able to support two different platforms. Of course, console is the biggest platform. We had to support PS3 and PS4, [so] really we had to stop many projects on Vita because we didn’t have teams to make PS4 games.”
Yoshida said Nintendo is now able to avoid this issue with its hybrid console, the Nintendo Switch.
“Nintendo did so well on handheld, but not so well on console… but for Nintendo Switch, all first-party just worked on one hardware,” he said. “That, I think, really helped Switch.”
Yoshida did reveal he was at first skeptical of the PlayStation Portal.
“I was like, who’d want this hardware? Just being remote play,” he said. “I remember saying to the hardware team, ‘the only way PS Portal will be successful is if we sell it at $199’… and they did it. Not because I said it, because they clearly had the same way of thinking.”
Yoshida commented on potential future handhelds from PlayStation and that he is a big fan of portable PCs like the Steam Deck.
“That category in which I buy one or two new pieces of hardware is this, so of course, I would be so excited if in the future PlayStation made something like this,” he said. “However, personally, even now PlayStation is much bigger than in the PS3 days, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to try and manage two different platforms.”
Sony Interactive Entertainment released the PS Vita in Japan in December 2011 and in the west in February 2012. Sony has not disclosed lifetime sales for the handheld, however, VGChartz estimates has the PS Vita selling just over 13 million units.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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