Remember when Sony released portable gaming systems that, at their peak, stood toe-to-toe with the handheld king Nintendo? Apparently, Sony remembers as well, at least according to a reported statement from the tech giant.
Well-known leaker, Tom Henderson, claims Sony is “paying very close attention to the current handheld market” due to its success with the PlayStation Portal. The Portal indeed has been a surprise hit since its release back in November 2023, with Sony stating sales exceeded its expectations and it reportedly becoming the best-selling PS5 accessory in 2024.
It’s not a bad bet considering how the PC handheld market has been booming in recent years due to Valve’s very successful Steam Deck, which was then followed by other strong entries like the Lenovo Legion Go, the Asus ROG Ally, its follow-up the Asus ROG Ally X, and more. And Sony is a veteran, knowing how to craft an incredibly successful portable that sells well in the millions, a la PSP.
However, there is one major blemish on Sony’s track record, one that caused the tech giant to pull out of the market and stay out since then — the PS Vita.
What happened to the PS Vita?
Despite the Vita having incredible hardware for its time (easy to develop for, excellent graphics, smooth UI filled with tons of features, and a very affordable price point), it soon floundered and failed to live up to sales expectations.
The worst part is that this failure was largely due to Sony’s own shortcomings. The first and biggest failure was the sheer lack of both first and third-party game support. Sony Japan Studio largely carried the first-party gaming charge, developing many titles for the portable but other than a few scant other ports there wasn’t much support on this front.
Third-party support was also more difficult to come by, as many developers chose to release titles for Nintendo’s 3DS which, despite its far weaker hardware, had a much higher install base and therefore would most likely return higher sales. And if the library of games is lacking on both fronts, what incentive does a gamer have to invest in this system?
Finally, there was the memory card issue. The PS Vita had very little memory in the micro SD card it came with, so buyers were required to purchase other SD cards. Not much of an issue, except that instead of making the system compatible with literally any brand of SD card on the market, you could only use first-party cards specifically made for it, which were marked up several times the price of regular ones and rarely went down in price.
To this day I still mourn the PS Vita, an incredible portable system that was mishandled so thoroughly. If Sony does decide to enter the PC handheld market, I truly hope it learned its hard-won lessons from the Vita and will ensure that it receives proper support without the memory price gouging.
Please Sony, don’t make the same mistake again.