This Week In Retro: PlayStation Vita (Patreon)

December 17, 2011: More like PlayStation Culpa

by Diamond Feit

The older I get, the more I realize the importance of revisiting past failures. I don't mean dwelling on my mistakes—my brain does that on its own, all the time, without any effort on my part. I'm talking about going back and looking at things that I dismissed at the time as flawed, disappointing, or straight-up terrible. It's not like those things have transformed with age, but I surely have, and it's entirely likely that a judgment I made in my teens, my 20s, or even my 30s won't hold up today in my 40s.

As 2021 draws to a close, writing this column (and recording Retronauts) all year long has attuned my gaze to a decade earlier, quite a tumultuous time in the video game world. Both Nintendo and Sony introduced new handheld systems to replace aging hardware, and both discovered that the landscape of mobile gaming was completely different than it had been just five years earlier. Yet while both devices struggled, only one made a complete turnaround, while the other became a punchline.

In the case of Nintendo, the 3DS was a successor to the globally-popular Nintendo DS, and while the upgraded system retained the general form factor along with full backwards compatibility with the DS, it introduced glasses-free 3D graphics to the masses. The masses, however, balked at the $250 asking price and limited launch lineup, but a few months of updates (and a much-needed discount) convinced them that Nintendo's latest platform was chock-full of great games.

Sony had a steeper hill to climb. The PlayStation Portable certainly sold well, but it never managed to become the "new handheld entertainment platform for the coming era" that Sony hoped for. The UMD format gave the PSP an advantage as far as data capacity is concerned, enabling the not-quite-pocket-sized gadget to play PS2-quality 3D games, movies, and music. However, retailers and publishers balked on the proprietary discs as early as 2006, and by 2008 Sony openly encouraged developers to cut back on physical releases and embrace digital distribution via the PlayStation Store.

Sony even went so far as to introduce a disc-free model with the PSP Go in 2009, but consumers overwhelmingly preferred the larger, cheaper models. Yes, Sony made a smaller PSP with fewer parts but charged a premium price for it, a fact I mention because it's going to be relevant again later in the story.

By 2010, the failure of the PSP Go was apparent to the world, and Nintendo had already revealed that the 3DS would be coming the following year. Rumors of a "PSP 2" were already floating around gaming news portals, though Sony consistently denied such a device was coming soon, even after privately unveiling a prototype during that year's Tokyo Game Show. The official reveal would not come until January 2011, well after Nintendo's public hands-on event for the 3DS. Still, Sony remained coy with the press, only referring to the new machine by its codename: "Next Generation Portable" or NGP for short.

At E3 2011, with the 3DS already on store shelves around the world, Sony finally announced that the company's newest hardware would be dubbed "PlayStation Vita." Kaz Hirai infamously explained the unusual name with the trivia tidbit "Vita means life," adding "we're confident that PlayStation Vita will be the first product that truly blurs those lines between PlayStation entertainment and your real life." Despite the fallout from the March 11 tsunami and the 3DS already visibly struggling at retail to live up to expectations, Sony confirmed the Vita would launch by year's end and cost the same as Nintendo's beleaguered portable: $250 in the United States.

Superficially, the Vita looks just like a brighter, beefier PSP, but it includes a number of bells and whistles its predecessor did not. Vita features two miniature analog sticks, mirroring the controller configuration of home consoles, but also apes smartphones by including front and rear-facing cameras. The Vita lacks a second screen like the 3DS has, but the main screen and the rear face of the device are both touchscreens. This, coupled with the machine's internal motion sensors, allows for a variety of control methods that no other platform could match.

Arriving five years into the lifespan of the PlayStation 3, the Vita was presented as the ultimate companion to Sony's HD home gaming machine. Not only would the Vita support PSP and PlayStation 1 classics, but select PlayStation 3 games would also have Vita versions. The Vita would continue the PSP tradition of "remote play," enabling users to connect wirelessly and play home console games on the go, but now there was also the option to connect the Vita to the PS3 and play games across two screens.

Take Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, a November 2011 release on home consoles and a launch title for Vita. Both versions of the game are nearly identical, a small miracle given the technology gap between an HD home console and a portable system. However, should a player boot up both applications at the same time, the Vita touchscreen can function as a shortcut for performing complex commands. Not so good at spinning analog sticks or pressing multiple buttons at the same time? Just tap the Vita screen to instantly execute a super move and perform devastating combos with far less frustration.

Connectivity features and compatibility with users' existing purchases are swell, but to launch a new console there has to be exclusive software that justifies purchasing another machine, especially when said machine costs $250. Nintendo's 3DS launch earlier in 2011 had been a bust, with few games worth remembering once Mario and company arrived in the fall. If Vita was going to win over players outside of the PlayStation die-hards, Sony would have to appeal to the widest possible audience.

With that in mind, Vita's initial spread of games looked to cover the gamut. Not only were there portable versions of high-profile hits like Uncharted, Wipeout, and Everybody's Golf, but other genres like first-person shooters, puzzle, fighting, platforming, and rhythm games were also included. Surely the combined might of Vita's stunning technical superiority, a broad launch lineup, and the full-force of Sony's corporate machinations should be enough to ensure the new platform a long and healthy life.

It did not.

Let's start with the factors that were beyond Sony's control. As successful as the PSP had been (especially in Japan), the system never found a massive, must-own first-party app. The biggest hit on PSP was Capcom's Monster Hunter series, and even that was only a domestic phenomenon. Unfortunately for Sony, Nintendo was able to secure a Monster Hunter port for 3DS, one that launched the week before Vita did, and the company announced that Monster Hunter 4 would be a 3DS exclusive. This let the air out of Vita's sales before she even left the dock.

Losing Monster Hunter was a blow, but when looking at the broader market, there were far more people out there unfamiliar with that series who could have been attracted to the Vita. However, smartphones had found near-global saturation by 2011, including in Japan. With millions of users carrying around a device in their pockets that connected to the internet, took pictures, played music, displayed videos, and even played games, the Vita seemed entirely superfluous to a typical consumer. It didn't matter that Vita had better games or better controls; a smartphone could do the job well enough for most people, and more importantly, they already owned one.

If these problems weren't bad enough, Sony made several short-sighted decisions that further crippled the Vita's chances on the market. The steep asking price was likely non-negotiable, but Sony compounded that monetary hurdle by neglecting to include on-board memory, instead relying exclusively on proprietary memory sticks for Vita. At launch, these necessary add-ons came in 4, 8, 16, and 32 gigabyte sizes; not a lot of space for a system hyping digital distribution.

Worse, these sticks carried an exorbitant price tag: the 4GB version (barely enough to hold a single Vita game) cost $20 in the US, while the 16GB size (enough for a handful of Vita titles) retailed for $60—as much as a brand-new PS3 game. I couldn't tell you how much a 32GB card cost because I couldn't find one at launch despite going to at least five different stores. Sony later introduced a 64GB card but insisted on an MSRP of over $100, though these days I never see one for less than $200. Coincidentally, this week I bought 2 64GB MicroSD cards for my kids' Switch consoles for less than $10 each.

I could also gripe about the silliness of restricting each Vita to a single user account, the awkward feel of the rear touch pad, and the baffling built-in app known as "near" which was Sony's answer to Streetpass except it didn't work and didn't make any sense. However, the actual worst thing Sony did to the Vita was respond to all its problems with a collective shrug. When Nintendo saw the 3DS falling behind, the company slashed the price and gave early adopters a bundle of free software to offset the perceived slight of the console's sudden decrease in value. When Sony saw all the same things happen to the Vita, the company responded by all but ignoring the platform during their 2012 E3 presentation and insisting to the press that no price cut was forthcoming (Vita's price would eventually drop in 2013).

Of course, by 2013 Sony had already moved on to hyping the PlayStation 4 full-time. I don't blame them focusing their collective attention on righting the wrongs of the PlayStation 3, but the fact that the company consistently treated the Vita like an afterthought sent a message that the platform wouldn't last. Even though the PS4 would support all the remote play features that worked with the PS3, Sony never made an honest push for the Vita as a standalone experience. Consider how hard Sony is trying to convince me to buy a PlayStation 5 right now, a console no one can find in stores without winning a lottery, compared to how little they spoke about the Vita when it was widely available.

I cannot fault Sony for neglecting the Vita without admitting that I, as a video game enthusiast, hardly gave the system a chance either. I bought one at launch, to be sure, and quickly filled my meager memory card with a slew of PlayStation 1 favorites and awesome indie games. Yet I also took every opportunity to mock the system's shortcomings and rarely took it with me when traveling, instead making the 3DS my constant companion for the better part of six years.

It wasn't until last summer that I gave Sony's handheld an honest try, and to my delight I found it to be a solid-as-hell machine, one that's way more comfortable to hold than a Nintendo Switch. I don't have the largest library of games for it, but between my PS1 Classics, my PlayStation Plus freebies, and a few key PSP leftovers, I've had a great time catching up with Sony's forgotten system, and there's still plenty of backlogged software on my Vita I can try.

Do I regret my initial disinterest in the PlayStation Vita? No, it is not my job to unconditionally love products. With a decade of hindsight, however, I see the Vita has a harbinger of where video games were heading in 2011 but hadn't quite reached yet. Before game consoles had built-in screenshot buttons and dedicated apps to share them with, there was Vita. Before the Nintendo Switch let us bring all our games from the living room to the great outdoors, there was Vita. Before day-one digital releases of every single game became the industry standard, there was Vita.

My only regret regarding the PlayStation Vita was agreeing to get on a boat with scores of other journalists during Tokyo Game Show 2011 with the lure of hands-on Vita time. Not only was I feeling ill that day, the entire evening became a fiasco and I missed out on hours of writing time (and almost missed my last train). To this day, "Vita Boat" is my personal shorthand for a PR disaster, an unforced error that sours the perception of an otherwise fine product.

It wasn't all bad though. I got a free tempura dinner out of it, made some friends via our shared distaste for the experience, and later translated my ordeal into a story on WIRED Game|Life and even a Super Mario Maker level called "A Three Hour Tour." In Latin, Vita may mean "life," but to me, it means "pity."

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.