Former PlayStation US Boss Wishes Sony Supported the PlayStation Vita More - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 07 April 2022 / 3,665 Views
Jack Tretton, the former head of Sony Computer Entertainment America, in an interview with Axios said he wished Sony supported the PlayStation Vita more.
He feels some of PlayStation's more innovative projects were "orphaned a little bit" by Sony.
"There were certainly technologies that I thought were good but just didn’t have the level of support they needed," said Tretton referring to the PlayStation Vita, 3D gaming, and PlayStation VR.
He added, "When you work for a big company, you have to love everything they’re doing, whether you personally love it or not."
"So you come up with new technology to introduce to the industry and the consumers," he said. "But do you have the marketing budget to really drive the message? Do you have the developer support dollars to incent them to develop games to support this initiative? And sometimes you would birth technology and hope that it caught on."
Former PlayStation U.S. chief Jack Tretton, like some of you, wished Sony did better by the Vita
— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) April 7, 2022
"There were certainly technologies that I thought were good but just didn't have the level of support they needed."
(from today's Axios Gaming newsletter) pic.twitter.com/Rxs0gQfG16
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. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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It’s too bad consumers didn’t support it more.
Sony's underwhelming support didn't help.
It is a hard case of egg and chicken. Both are true.
Personally, I think the chicken (Sony) deserves the bulk of the blame.
When the Vita basically failed to take off after 30 or so months on the American market, the only big games Sony released on it was maybe Freedom Wars.
When the Wii U failed to take off after 30 months, Nintendo released Splatoon, Yoshi, Mario Maker, Pokken, Star Fox, and Breath of the Wild on a semi-regular basis, even when you can argue that making some of the se Switch exclusives would have made them more money.
Considering how the Vita ultimately did better worldwide than the Wii U and many Japanese and indie devs supported the Vita into 2016, or later, I think the comparison is fair enough.
An argument could also be made that Sony could tell that the Vita was never going to be a huge success and decided not to throw good money after bad.
Money spent ensuring your fanbase that they will get return on value whenever they buy your hardware, even if it doesn't do well, is a worthy investment in its own right.
And 10-15M customer base is still enough to make some profit when making lower budget games, problem is Sony gone to double focus on bigger productions that need big sales.
On blame for sure Sony deserves the blames, it is their responsibility to push their product and entice the market to buy it/support it. I was just saying that the system not seeing great success made it easier for them to not care about keep supporting.
The memory card prices is what kept me away from it at launch. I think I got my first one around 2015 and went to GameStop to buy some games but the Vita section was the biggest joke I had ever seen for a console. I ended up picking up a SpongeBob game that turned out to be terrible and that turned out to be the last physical game I bought before selling my Vita.
Besides the memory cards were expensive. It never got support from the big publishers it was absurdly strange situation back then, like many of those publishers had to go focus on the home consoles while nobody else wanted to develop spin-off games like they used to for PSP and DS. Bummer.
I actually very much enjoy my Vita. It's a neat little system and was one of the first handhelds (in my eyes) that felt less like a machine for mini versions of games and instead a home you could make full console like games on. The Switch after the Vita kind of brought this idea home further.
They had the right idea with remote play - it just got difficult due to lacking matching (top) buttons.
They had the right idea on storage expansion - they just wanted too much for those cards.
Their focus on PS4 also really divided their attention.
The OLED screen was awesome, the sticks better than what PSP did, carts instead of silly UMDs were the right move. It's sad to see it have failed.
The biggest problem for the Vita was the lack of appealing titles and genres. The PSP had much better software. The only genre that was better on the Vita was Visual Novels. Comparing software the Vita was a downgrade in almost every way.
Ah yes, an opportunity to bitch about Vita!
Should have been built with TV support from the start. Which wouldn't have been crazy considering PSP did it.
Games that used touch, motion and camera crap in major releases were a mistake.
Sony used notable IPs poorly and some skipped Vita entirely beyond some ports and BC. The PS2 ports made poor use of the hardware as well. No Gran Turismo probably being the biggest mistake. Yet they felt a mediocre port of Borderlands 2 was worth doing?
Vita at the very least a great platform for portable indie titles. But there obviously was no audience for that.
In spite of everything, I was a fan of Vita. But it felt less special than PSP.
I love the Vita so much. Still one of my fave handhelds. It's the SEGA Saturn/Dreamcast of handhelds.
it would of made sony alot more money if they used micro sd cards the sony ones was to expensive for 32GB so only everyone had 8-16GB so it was an issue its full after few games. if people had 128-256 memory then would of been alot more PSN purchases.. i still have my vita but not used it in years
he was in a position to do it.
That's like saying that Reggie as Head of Nintendo US was in a position to change the fortune of the the WII U, most decisions made by Reggie and Jack were to do with NA marketing and release. they are positions whose main task is promotional .
As a head they are part of the chain of decision and can talk and incentivize. Can't say what he said and pretend as if he had no power whatsoever to impact anything.
The fact is his position was to market the consoles and games in the American market, he wasn't responsible for console or game development or funding , those regional heads spend most of their time on promoting and advertising the product to their region
Me too, Jack, me too...
It was actually a good little device, so it was sad it never got the support like the PSP did.
Hopefully Sony re-enters the handheld market at some point... As although the Vita bombed, the PSP was a big success at 76~ million units sold.
Plus competition in the handheld space is needed.
why PSP was popular:
In the west, because it was a multimedia device.
In Japan, because it had Monster Hunter.
Hardware sale: great
Software sale: terrible, it had only 3 games sold more than 5 millions.
You can thank weak security and piracy for that. It's the reason they tried so hard with the Vita to lock it down (eventually it was cracked, but by then people kind of forgot about it).
