Failure of the PS Vita Part #1

It's fairly common knowledge that the PS Vita lost the handheld battle to the Nintendo 3DS, despite both consoles struggling in their early days. Why was that the case, though? Well, that's what we're going to find out, so please join me on this journey through the console generations, because despite releasing in 2011, it started way back in the previous console generation, and in many ways, history repeated itself. This means we'll start with the Vita's predecessor, the Playstation Portable, or PSP for short, because its own timeline and legacy are important on the long run.

Nintendo, with its introduction of the monochromatic Gameboy in 1989, had a tight and unrivaled grip on the handheld gaming market. Competitors were around, like the Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket, Wonderswan and so on, but they never managed to catch on. The Gameboy and its successors reigned supreme, and for good reason: they were cost-efficient!

When looking at it nowadays, the Gameboy wasn't particularly impressive. It could only display four shades of green, had no backlight (meaning it was hard to play in direct sunlight), and was somewhat bulky. By comparison, the Game Gear, released by Sega just a year later, had a brighter, backlit full-color screen and much more impressive specs. And yet, it failed to gain any traction. Why was that the case? Simple: money and average consumer behavior. The Gameboy only cost 90 bucks when it came out, while the Game Gear retailed for a whopping 150! Both of these were major investments back in the day, but being a whole 60 dollars cheaper allowed the Gameboy to be adopted by financially weaker households.

The other driving factor was the presence of various killer apps (basically, games that sell a system): the Gameboy had Tetris, Super Mario and was even able to revitalize itself in its later life with the release of the ever-popular Pokémon Red and Blue! Meanwhile, if you ask anyone who owned a Game Gear, they likely won't be able to name a similar killer application - sure, the many Sonic games were popular, but were ports of existing Master System games and failed to move units in the same way.

However, the final nail in the coffin was the efficiency of the systems themselves. With just two AA batteries, the Gameboy could run for a whopping 30 hours at a time! Meanwhile, the Game Gear infamously required six AA batteries and could muster five hours at most. This was the consequence of Sega investing into state of the art technology - sure, a backlit color screen was nice and all, but it was too costly, both in terms of the system itself and the constant need for new batteries. The intention was obvious: Sega wanted to smash the competition by releasing a technically impressive system, but due to the aforementioned reasons, it could never hold a candle to the Gameboy, despite having an otherwise solid library of games.

Now, why am I mentioning all of this? Simple: the PSP's struggles and the Vita's eventual failure both happened due to very similar reasons: trying to one-up the competition but falling behind due to misjudging the market for their system.

By the time the Gameboy Advance was at its height, handheld competition, barring a few educational systems aimed at very young children, there was absolutely no competition. This meant that, even with the Gamecube not doing as well as Ninty might've hoped, they still lived in a profitable niche, especially with the aid of several Pokémon games, which sold millions in a matter of days. Following up from this, the system's successor, the Nintendo DS, was announced and scheduled for a 2004 release. With Sony having reigned supreme in the console market, with the Playstation 1 and 2 both being the best selling systems of their respective generations, they decided it was about time to dip their feet into the handheld market as well.

Now, looking back, the Nintendo DS was a highly experimental systems: featuring two screens, one of them touch-sensitive, and with system specs about on par with the Nintendo 64, people were somewhat skeptical. Nintendo did somewhat acknowledge this themselves, by announcing the DS was not intended to replace the GBA, but rather exist as its own system, likely a statement they could use to fall back on in case the system turned out to be a failure. And true to this, while the initial announcement was met with some praise, it also drew criticism, with several people calling the system "gimmicky" and especially criticized the small screen size, with many outlet predicting outright failure, especially since, around the same time, Sony's own handheld received its formal announcement.

Enter the PSP, a handheld that promised to bring console-experiences into the palm of your hands. Featuring a large, 16:9 screen, an analog nub in addition to a d-pad, four face and two shoulder buttons, the system promised to be as powerful as the PS2. Needless to say, this caught a lot of attention - not only were people intrigued by the system's specs, but also its additional capabilities. Not only could it play games, but was also marketed as a multimedia device, being able to play movies, music, access the internet and feature a store were people could purchase and download digital versions of full games, in addition to other additional content! This alone led to a lot of people scoffing at the Nintendo DS, which had no multimedia capabilities at all, and despite having online components, did not come with a web browser or online store of its own. The closest Nintendo themselves ever got to a multimedia device was the GBA Video series, which contained movies or episodes of TV shows on cartridges, but in compressed dog poop quality, as well as the Gamecube receiving a Japan-exclusive DVD player add-on, neither of which took off.

Not only that, but when comparing the launch titles of both systems, the PSP was clearly the winner in the eyes of hardcore gamers. Games marked with an asterisk are ports or remakes of existing titles. Just compare:

As you can see, not only did the PSP have more than twice the amount of launch games the DS did, but the library was not only far more varied, featuring sports games, platformers, action games, strategy titles and racers, but also had far more third-party support than the competition did. Nintendo has historically always had a difficult time getting third parties on board, or to stay, but the initial lineup was, for all intents and purposes, rather sad. Meanwhile, the PSP's launch library is, to this day, considered the best of any system, and was something that gave Sony an early edge over the competition.

Another thing that gave Sony a headstart against Nintendo was their aggressive marketing for the new system. In addition to the announcement at E3, the PSP also received television and magazine adverts, and posters were plastered all over computer stores - par the course, naturally, but one of these adverts was incredibly bizarre and semi-sexual, featuring two squirrels enthusiastically comparing the PSP to nuts. No, seriously, see for yourself:

While it may be weird, this was a clever move on Sony's part: an advertisement like this was so off-beat and strange that it would stay in people's minds. The only issue was that it didn't show much in the way of the actual system or its games, but it was a good attempt. More interestingly, however, an attempt at undercover viral marketing was also made, with an inconspicuous blog, seemingly written by a kid, detailing why they really want to get a PSP for Christmas, aptly titled All I Want For XMAS Is A PSP.  Unfortunately, the blog itself is no longer online, but it essentially moonlighted as a genuine webspace were someone just expressed their interest in the system and spent many blog posts talking about its features and why they're awesome. Naturally, after a while the jig is up, but it was a very remarkable shot at viral marketing at a time where internet access still wasn't a given for every household - as such, people were still innocent enough to get fooled.

Meanwhile, Nintendo did their usual business, which means posting only a few magazine ads and making token appearances at gaming conventions, but otherwise relying on word of mouth for their marketing. However, Sony made an inexplicable and sudden shift in their marketing campaign following the system's release, likely in an attempt to differentiate themselves from Nintendo, and it would be their first major mistake. Whereas Ninty was still pushing the family-friendly (remember that term for later) approach of their games, Sony specifically started addressing hardcore gamers and began to push the system towards them - the only game specifically marketed at kids was Ape Escape On the Loose, which was a remake of a PS1 game, while the rest were heavily advertised as appealing to these core gamers who just want their console games on the bus. The problem with this? Video games, and especially handhelds, were still considered to be kids' entertainment at the time! This move greatly hurt the system's holiday sales. Simply put yourself into the shoes of a 2000s parent:

You want to surprise your kid with a new video game system for the holidays. You go to the store and see the cheaper dual screen system with the cute dog game, but also the expensive one with lots of racers and shooting games. Which do you choose? The answer is fairly obvious, which leads us to the next part.

In what is essentially a repetition of the Game Gear situation, the PSP, while technically impressive, had several issues stacked against it, beyond the much higher entry price:

• The games came on UMDs, a proprietary disk format. Not only was the disk tray itself incredibly loud and prone to malfunction, this also meant games had noticeable loading times, which is poison for handhelds. Meanwhile, Nintendo continued to use cartridges, which had less available space, but also reduced loading times to an absolute minimum.
• Adding to that, UMDs were not rewritable. This meant that for saving your games, you needed an additional memory stick for the system, which was once again proprietary and expensive. Not only that, but they were likewise prone to malfunction with extended usage. DS games, meanwhile, exclusively save to the respective cartridge, not requiring any peripherals.
• The highly advertised movies also came on UMDs, as the system couldn't play normal DVDs. This means that, if you wanted to watch a movie you already owned on the go, you had to buy it again, either digitally or physically.
• The online store, while revolutionary for its time, was hampered by two factors: comparatively high file sizes for games, and low download speed at the time. Remember, the system was released in 2004, where it was still normal to wait for several minutes for a website to load in. This meant that bigger games could take days to download if you purchased them digitally.
• Battery life. Once again, the DS was, thanks to its lower specs, far superior in that regard. The DS could, with a full charge, last up to twelve hours, depending on the brightness settings. Meanwhile, the PSP could last for six and a half hours at most, even at the lowest settings. And remember, this was at a time before there were outlets on airplanes and trains!
• Pricing. The DS retailed for $150, while the PSP did for $250. Not only is this a hundred bucks more, but adjusted for inflation, that equals $250 and $415 by 2024! That was a huge pain point for consumers back in the day, and is what ultimately made parents buy the DS instead.

Even ignoring all of the aforementioned faults of the system, Sony failed to notice an approaching trend, while Nintendo, perhaps unintentionally, ended up catering towards it, creating a new breed of gamers in the process: the casual crowd! Beyond its action-oriented games, like Metroid Prime Hunters, or platformers like Super Mario 64 DS, it also introduced a bunch of other games, ostensibly aimed at children once again, like Nintendogs, an early entry in the system's library. With its mostly open nature, lack of any way to get a Game Over, and its easy to pick up and play nature, it ended up becoming a huge hit with non-gamers. This was followed by other "cozy" games, such as the relaxing and experimental Electroplankton, with an emphasis on music, Brain Age, which helped people flex their mental muscles.

But arguably the biggest game changer was Animal Crossing: Wild World. The series wasn't new, going all the way back to the N64, but Wild World was, due to the DS's already high installbase, the title to push the series into mainstream success. It was truly a game that just about anyone with the ability to read could pick up and play; kids, moms, grandparents, the target audience was, for the first time ever, everyone, and it's open-ended nature meant people would always have something to do, regardless if they wanted to become billionaires, deck out their houses or just grow flowers. Not only that, but due to running in real time, the game also had different things going on at different times of the day and year, adding to its longevity, and giving Nintendo a way to print money.

The PSP, meanwhile, while popular with adult gamers, failed to catch the same crowd, which can be traced back to its lack of comparable games - almost everything on the system appealed to the hardcore crowd. For instance, the best selling game for the system was GTA: Liberty City Stories, a game very much not intended for kids, and also a port of an existing one. But cozy, laidback family games? Not much on offer. Even the Harvest Moon series, which was the only thing coming close to Animal Crossing in terms of gameplay, only had two offerings on the system, one of them a port bundle of the PS1 games, the other a remake of a hated PS2 entry, and both ended up not selling particularly well.

Even ignoring the rising casual market, which would actually have a much bigger impact on the next generation's handhelds, Nintendo had one more trick up their sleeves that would ensure their continued dominance on the market, and by the time this game, or rather pair of games came out, Sony's grave was already shoveled: Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, the series' first entries on the Nintendo DS.

Pokémon is by far and large the most popular media franchise in the world, even to this day, and the newest entries were highly anticipated at the time. And sure enough, the pair of games sold around 18 million units worlwide, with several more entries with similar sales following in the coming years. This was the one-two punch that rendered any chance of Sony usurping the market from Nintendo impossible, as there was no way to beat those numbers, even if both systems were barely three years on the market at the time.

Despite the odds being stacked against them, the PSP was still a financial success at the very least. Unfortunately, while the DS continued to be supplied with critically acclaimed titles, both for the core and casual crowd, the PSP's own in-house support dwindled, with Sony themselves seemingly losing interest in first party development altogether, with third parties being the ones to keep the system alive.

This also resulted in the system's sales slowing down immensely overseas, while remaining somewhat stable in Japan. Around 2010, the system would instead become a safe haven for role-playing games, specifically Japanese ones. A lot of cool titles, such as ZHP: Unlosing Ranger vs Darkdeath Evilman, Sol Trigger, Persona 3 Portable and many more came out during that time. Unfortunately, due to the PSP's own dwindling popularity, publishers were somewhat hesitant to take risks, so a lot of these games ended up not getting localized, or at least not until they got re-releases on popular systems much later, such as Akiba's Trip, Conception and more. During this time, the only publishers consistently releasing titles for the handheld were Nippon Ichi Software and Atlus, who continued to localize their own and other games, even in the face of possible financial failure.

It also led to surprise localizations of a few games nobody expected. Notably, Class of Heroes 2, whose first entry was released in 2008, got an English release in 2013, thanks to Gajinworks, while Summon Night 5 became the first numbered entry in its own series to make it to international shores in 2015, done by the same company. This meant the later years of the system made it a fan-favorite for niche gamers, especially since RPGs had been losing traction since the switch to HD consoles, with few exceptions.

Sadly, even despite this, there was another factor that greatly hurt the PSP's store longevity...

Piracy in the realm of video games is nothing new. Back in the day, the most popular gadgets for this were multi-game carts, which were unlincensed and often had tons of games on the same cartridge, typically with confusing names and including lots of duplicates. Later on, flashcarts became more common, beginning with the GBA and continuing from there. The concept here was that these cards came with a flash drive and micro SD chip, meaning you could download a ROM image from the internet, transfer it onto the SD card, put it into the cartridge and then play it on your system. The DS likewise had a multitude of such cards, most famously the dreaded R4 card, which ended up being outlawed in certain countries, but was still incredibly widespread.

Now, the PSP didn't use cartridges, and UMDs were not rewritable, so cards were out of the question. This didn't mean that piracy was impossible. In fact, as early as 2005, an exploit was discovered, allowing users to hack the system through files on the memory stick, and this was also incredibly easy to do, allowing people to rather easily install games on the system directly, which also allowed one to bypass longer loading times. Naturally, Nintendo and Sony weren't unaware of this, and quickly put measures against it in place. For DS games, anti-piracy flags were put into later games beginning around 2008, rendering games unplayable if a flashcart was detected, while Sony did this and also released firmware patches to counteract these hacks. The later revision of the DS, the DSi, likewise used firmware updates mainly to invalidate flashcarts.

And yet, all of this accomplished very little in the grand scheme of things. With every firmware update to prevent it, the pirates came up with their fortifications to circumvent things once more. By the end of it, Sony more or less threw the towel, with the PSP quickly becoming a favorite among the homebrew scene, even warranting its own Wikipedia article.

As is typical for any video game system that's popular, the PSP also received various revisions throughout its run. The original model, retroactively dubbed the PSP-1000, received two overhauls, called the 2000 and 3000, respectively. In both cases, the changes were mostly cosmetic and practical, reducing overall system size, improving the disk drive and improving wi-fi cabalities as well as featuring different screens, with the one for the 2000 being considered the overall best.

And then, in 2009, Sony released the PSP Go. Featuring a sliding design that had the controls underneath the screen, it was a digital-only device. This means it came without a disk tray at all, and all games were download-only. This was, especially given it came out several years into the system's lifespan, a rather disastrous choice. This left customers who already owned games physically without any real reason to upgrade, as digital versions of games have to be purchased separately. And yet, it also failed to entice new customers, on the simple grounds that not all games were actually available digitally, same with movies and other media. Needless to say, it failed to move a substantial amount of units and was quietly discontinued in most markets in 2011, and in North America in 2013. Funnily enough, had the system come out only a few years later, it would've probably been received much more warmly, given how digital-only systems are becoming more and more normal these days. But alas, it was the wrong time, and the wrong audience.

Then, in 2011, the system received another revision, likely in an attempt to refurbish unsold older PSPs. This model, dubbed the PSP Street, or PSPE-1000, was likewise bizarre. In order to sell it as cheaply as possible, many corners were cut - the system was made of lightweight plastic, featured worse buttons and d-pad that often caused friction, came with a mono speaker and no wi-fi capabilities. Naturally, you could still get stereo audio by using headphones, and you could still download stuff onto the system by connecting it to a PC and accessing Sony's store, but it likewise ended up not being particularly popular, especially since the PSP's own successor was already gearing up for release at the time. It wasn't a good swansong for the system to go out with, to say the least, even if it's miles ahead of the Go.

Meanwhile, the DS only received two major revisions. One was the DS Lite, which came out in 2006. In addition to making the system lighter and giving it a sleeker look, it also improved the screens and gave more lighting options to make playing in sunlight less of a hassle. Later, in 2009, the DSi was released, which had a similar design to the Lite version, but ditched the GBA slot (and thus any backwards compatibility), but improved wi-fi capabilities and came with its own e-store where small exclusive games could be purchased, as well as some throwaway camera and sound features. Perhaps most importantly, this revision also came in an XL version, which doubled the screen size, catering to people with visual impairments, such as the rising casual crowds considering of (grand)parents. Beyond that, Nintendo abstained from any potentially fatal experiments, with all versions of the system selling well.

In the end, the PSP was not the commercial failure people often claim it was. Quite the contrary, the system sold over 80 million units in its lifetime, which is not only respectable, but actually a huge number, putting it into the top ten best-selling video game systems. It simply had the unfortunate, and unlikely, competition of the Nintendo DS, which is not only the best-selling handheld of the time, but also the second best-selling video game system ever, with 154.02 million units sold, just a million shy of Sony's own PS2. It is still fondly remembered to this day for its solid and unique library.

And Sony wasn't willing to throw the towel just yet, coming up with their own successor at the same time the Nintendo 3DS was announced, now fully willing to thwart their competition, and sadly, what happened is history and topic of this whole article, so we'll now proceed to the main feature.