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Shuhei Yoshida Discusses Why the PlayStation Vita Failed

Shuhei Yoshida Discusses Why the PlayStation Vita Failed - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 17 January 2025 / 4,344 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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40 Comments
G2ThaUNiT (on 17 January 2025)

Losing major Capcom support and even Square Enix and Konami when it came to new titles were pretty huge losses on the Vita. Plus Studio Liverpool and Zipper, which were pretty big supporters of the PSP, were shuttered after a single title on the Vita that happened to both be launch titles. Japan Studio didn’t have much of an impact as well, which would’ve been great to have another LocoRoco or Patapon with the Vita’s gimmicky controls and touchpad, and Ready at Dawn were completely absent after putting the likes of Daxter and 2 God of War games on the PSP.

Vita had a lot of problems, but for me personally, those were the biggest absences the PSP had that the Vita didn’t and greatly affected the consoles popularity.

  • +4
2zosteven (on 17 January 2025)

now that we know why, the PS Vita2 will thrive

  • +3
Pemalite 2zosteven (on 18 January 2025)

I am hoping they give it another attempt, their handhelds from a hardware standpoint have actually been great. - But there needs to be interoperability between their home consoles game library.

Ironically it's about now where mobile hardware is starting to get powerful enough to run Playstation 4 equivalent titles.

  • +1
xMetroid (on 19 January 2025)

They dropped their first party support after like a year...

  • +1
rjason12 (on 18 January 2025)

It’s not often you hear a major player at one of these companies outlining the same reasons as a lot of us do for a failure of a console. A pleasant surprise.

  • +1
G2ThaUNiT rjason12 (on 18 January 2025)

It’s because he’s no longer with Sony. So he’s expressing his view on a multitude of matters. I’m sure he can’t talk about certain things still lol

  • +2
TheRealSamusAran rjason12 (on 20 January 2025)

No no no, it's the phones, they killed handhelds! No, don't look at the neighbor thriving with their own handheld, it's dem iPhones!

  • +2
HopeMillsHorror (on 20 January 2025)

Loved the Vita... But man, that formfactor didn't do it justice.
Playing for more than an hour always has my hands cramping bad lol

  • 0
Giggity_goo (on 19 January 2025)

its a brilliant homebrew device now i have a PSTV with like 400 psx games installed onto it

  • 0
Terramlea (on 18 January 2025)

why the vita failed ? No gt, no god of war, etc...

  • 0
firebush03 Terramlea (on 18 January 2025)

i think the big problem was that it didn’t have 3D. The 3DS had 3d, so this sounds like a valid conclusion to draw.

  • +1
G2ThaUNiT firebush03 (on 18 January 2025)

Doesn’t sound like a logical conclusion when you consider the 3DS was Nintendo’s worst performing handheld console lol

  • 0
firebush03 G2ThaUNiT (on 18 January 2025)

depends on how you define handheld (and whether you separate GB & GBC). You could argue that Wii U was a handheld b/c you could play w/o TV. Imagine if the Wii U gamepad had 3D…then it would have sold at least 100mil!

  • 0
G2ThaUNiT firebush03 (on 18 January 2025)

Just going by Nintendo themselves definition, GB/GBC are considered part of one family since GBC was a modest upgrade, so I guess a “Pro” variant. Wii U’s gamepad was completely useless if the base home console aspect wasn’t plugged in and powered up, and you couldn’t leave within like 10 feet from it.

So few people used the 3D aspect regularly of the 3DS that Nintendo came out with the 2DS. I know I never used the 3D and idk anyone that did. I always had that turned off. It was a gimmick from the start. 3DS simply had a huge library of games whereas the Vita did not. Especially when comparing the Vita to the PSP. It’s a night and day difference.

  • 0
LivncA_Dis3 (on 18 January 2025)

Ps vita was way ahead of it's time,

So much power but lacks software

  • 0
deskpro2k3 (on 18 January 2025)

I still have my PS Vita. The sticker for the bar code got smudge off.

  • 0
killer7 (on 17 January 2025)
  • -13
JackHandy (on 17 January 2025)
  • -14