Sony Doesn't Consider Handheld Gaming To Be A "Huge Market Opportunity"

I think he's right in that the Switch isn't really a competitor as such. But I do think it's a shame they aren't trying again with the Vita - it was a great little console that could (and should) have done much better.

It was Sony's fault the Vita didnt sell well, don't shift the blame. Nintendo is showing how it can be done right.

The Switch's sales don't contradict House's comments. As he says, "...they’ve really been additive to the business in the last year or so."

He sees the Switch as adding new or other customers to the market instead of taking them away from Sony/Microsoft. And I totally agree. The people that buy a Switch and no other console are either Nintendo fans who have no need for a PS4 or XB1 or very specific kinds of gamers (children, handheld-only gamers, etc.).

There's seriously no one out there who's having a hard time picking between the Switch and PS4 and finally going with the Switch. They're completely different experiences.

Vita was a flop because Sony stopped supporting it almost instantly after its release. Putting the shame on us is not something I take lightly. It was all Sony's fault and theirs alone.

Lately I really dislike Sony because of all the "under the table" things they're doing to prevent games from appearing in competing systems. (I still like their IPs though...)

You know why the Vita sucked? Over-priced proprietary memory cards, proprietary USB cable, horrible UI, hardly any AAA titles, and Sony themselves not really giving a damn.

Enter Nintendo Switch with SD card support, USB Type C, AAA support and a very simple and user friendly UI. Let's also not forget the attention Nintendo is giving it.

Sony shot themselves in the foot and wonder why the Vita bombed.

You can't beat the hybrid design of the Switch. A home and portable system in one. The only area that's lacking is the systems slight lack of power compared to the others, which wont matter in another generation. I wouldn't be at all surprised if both Sony and Microsoft copy the Switch and come out with hybrids of their own.

Sweet backpedalling, Sony 🤣

Sony and Nintendo have a different approach to gaming and for the most part they cater to different audiences, so they work better when they do their own business and focus on their own distinctive way to do things.
Some people want them both someone else choose only one of the two but they will very probably please their audience and be succesful when they do that

At this point it is far too early to judge whether or not the Switch will even reach PS4 level of sales but to discredit the fact that the system is selling gangbusters is just plain silly. Alot of things can happen in a few years and you have to remember that this is only the first six months, with Super Mario Odyssey set to come out not long from now, and it is pretty well guaranteed to boost sales. The 3DS didn't take off until games like Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land were released and the Switch is already looking to be a success, just imagine what will happen when more games drop. The potential is pretty huge.

As much as I love my vita it was only ever doomed to failure, Sony stopped supporting it about a day after release and unless Jrpgs are your thing you only have indies to play and indies don't sell consoles, the half baked AAA support was also idiocy. The comment has some fair points but I cannot help but feel he is missing the point of the switch in some way.

The difference with the Switch and the Vita, Nintendo actually supports the Switch while Sony let the Vita die.

It makes sense from their perspective. They don't think they can sell a portable device to the PlayStation audience after the Vita, just like Nintendo didn't risk putting out another home-console-only device after the Wii U. Focusing entirely on the PS4 has been working wonders for them, so I can't really blame them.

I really hope both the PS4 and the Switch continue to sell well. I also think the Switch is having an easy time in the market because, revisions aside, the 8th gen consoles are mature platforms at this point of their lifetime. If Sony had announced a PS5 with a November release date, I could see that halting the Switch's momentum.

That said, I'm glad both companies are doing well. The industry as a whole benefits from it.

I think it's less that Sony don't see it to be a huge market opportunity and more that they don't see a viable way to take a piece of that opportunity for themselves without harming their hugely lucrative PS4 business.

It's not so much that Sony are boxed into a corner but they have to push forwards in the home space and that doesn't allow them to divert resources or attention into anything that could really compete with the Switch on a level playing field.

@MagnaRoader I think I'm one of the few that's actually supported the PlayStation Vita from the very beginning.
I agree with everything that you're saying but, I don't think the Switch is much different when it comes to third party titles and especially physical games with them being seriously over priced.

Also, with the likes of chat audio Nintendo really screwed up there. That's something even the vita got right. Sure it's not the best of quality, but it's there.

I think you're forgetting about the over priced accessories for the Switch also. Joy cons, pro controllers and extra docks. Nintendo are just as guilty as Sony at charging extortionate prices for their official goods.

Iol, as if i care what sony thinks.

So Sony is blaming the consumer for the failure of the Vita, the system that they gave up on after a few months, way to keep your followers Sony!
Sorry but he is just bitter that Nintendo has made it work where they failed.
Also to be honest who cares what he thinks

I think House if full of it. Vita failed because of smartphones? Really? And 70 million 3ds are somehow not harmed by the same smartphones? You are full of it. Sure, if smartphones were not there, Vita may have had sold twice or trice it's numbers (10 mil right now), but so would 3ds. If you sold 7 times worser than competion, do not try to shift blame.

@SanderEvers Ok, that's an interesting scenario I hadn't thought of. But if they put their exclusives on Switch, where will it leave their Xbox brand?

"We have not seen that as being a huge market opportunity" - No, you haven't, and now you've missed the boat.

"The lifestyle shift toward the dominance of smartphones as the single key device that is always with you, was the determining factor" - So make a smartphone with detachable controllers that plays games, and do it properly.

Vita's failure was Sony's own doing, but before we all jump on the Sony bashing train lets wait a few years and see what Switch vs PS4 sales are like, only then will we be able to gauge if they were correct in their assessment or not

No Sony, the Vita wasn’t a huge success because you failed and then abandoned it because you were too lazy to support it. 3DS has huge numbers, so stop spouting BS

lol. Sony REKT

( seriously guys, what you expect they have to say ? )

@Nomad They are already diluting the Xbox brand enough so you can play most)(all?) of its games on your PC. Putting those games on a competitor's device is the next step.

Unless they make a massive rebound next gen, it wouldn't be surprising to see the Xbox division shut down eventually. Microsoft might still think they're worth keeping around as an entry point into their ecosystem, but who knows.

@MarcelRguez They don't have that many note worthy exclusives to begin with. Both Sony and Nintendo have them beat as 1st party developers.

I've said it before on the forums but I think the Switch form factor is an inevitability across the board. Of course Sony has no interest in it right this second. But with diminishing returns for hardware upgrades and with mobile hardware improving at the rate it is? When the PS4 is done they'd be stupid not to move to something more like the Switch

Here's the thing though - SMARTPHONE GAMES ARE TRASH.

To a degree, Sony is right not to worry. The Switch isn't gonna change the whole industry, just like the Wii didn't. But there are still a lot of people who want to play REAL GAMES on the go. Not the "free" to play - micro transaction CANCER trash games that flood mobile app stores.

Further, the Switch lets you CHOOSE. You can play on the TV or on the go - the same games. Show me a cell phone that can play games HALF the quality of Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8, Mario Odyssey, or any of the many other quality titles to come.

You can't. You cannot produce a quality game that runs only on a touch screen. You get gimmicks and trash tier versions of real games.

Just like no one wanted to play with the Wii and it's stupid lollipop controller, right Sony?

The moment they start being successful and stop fearing their competition, the arrogance rears it's head again with them.

@Nomad For sure, they're the third-party machine. While none of the manufacturers can sustain a console on their own, they'd have the hardest time.

The more I think of it, the more I can see the Xbox brand being swallowed up into PC gaming, as an off-shot of the Microsoft store.

@electrolite77 Definitely. It would also detract from their core marketing message and brand positioning.

The only way I see Sony creating a viable Switch competitor any time soon is if they were to make a handheld PS4. Literally PS4 compatible hardware in a handheld format. But that would come with a lot of ugly compromises compared to the Switch because it's not something they considered from the moment of conception.

Long term Sony do need to react in some way to Nintendo but they've probably not figured out exactly what that is yet. So their best option is to do what they're doing - acknowledge the Switch as a successful format but posit that it's a 'kids toy' and not in direct competition.

@SanderEvers I don't see it happening any time soon but Halo on Switch isn't completely beyond the realms of possibility for a couple of reasons. Primarily because Microsoft is less concerned with hardware under their new management but also because there's less overlap in their business strategies. There is theoretically at least room for Nintendo and Microsoft to make some sort of mutually beneficial deal.

"We have not seen that as being a huge market opportunity" BECAUSE YOU LACK VISION. Blue oceans, baby, blue oceans.....

I think Sony are just bitter about the Switch having already outsold the Vita.

Comparing the two as hybrid consoles is just plain dumb as well... the Vita is as much of a hybrid console as the Wii U is... in fact the Wii U is probably closer seeing as it didn't rely on a separate console to achieve that functionality.

I think it funny that gaming on the go with real games not smart phone apps isnt a big thing considering 3ds and pho e and all kinds of hand held devices selling just fine but my ps4 pro x crap boz has to have blu ray and vr etc. I have a blu ray/dvd player for that i also ha e a smartphone but nothing compares to my switch.

Oh yea and sony sucks microsoft sucks super expansive blu ray player paperweights

Sony and Microsoft have really underlined that the reason you buy their consoles is so you get flashy graphics. There are certain big sellng games on both consoles that if you took away the 1080p they'd get found out for being quite dull.

Not all of their games, just several important ones.

Sony threw in the towel. This still begs the question about the 3DS being the last handheld from nintendo and a transition into switch devices from now on?

The PlayStation 1/PSP/otherwise non-Vita games I have on my Vita greatly outnumbers... well, my Vita game collection. Poor li’l guy flopped pretty badly. None of my friends ever got one, to my knowledge.

I love the ps vita, there are some great jrpg on the console. Persona 4 golden, Tales of hearts r and many more psp and psone hits. I wish Sony didn't fumble with the memory card prices, the system could have been a major hit. It's pretty awesome the vita is getting limited run games, and a few new games here and there.

I told people Sony wasn't gonna make a portable. Not after Vita, and having PS4, PS4 Pro and PSVR on the market.

And they're probably right. There likely isn't alot of money in it for them. There is for Nintendo though

Just admit it already. You can't compete with Nintendo's handheld consoles.

"We remain focused around a highly connected gaming experience[…]"

Yeah. Highly connected. Being able to play Rocket League and Minecraft with your X-Box and PC buddies works really well on PS4.

Sony is only like this because their Vita and PSP flopped...due to lack of support or not enough.

The Vita is last great system from Sony in my opinion, could of been the Switch years earlier.

This is great! And just what I was hoping for - Nintendo has gained a corner of the market that the other players aren't interested in. That means they can hopefully go forward from console to console in in their own niche without being threatened by the other companies. I think the main home console market is now just too competitive for Nintendo to survive in and now they don't have to!

And Nintendo throws a spanner in the works as always and forces the competition to change the way they design their next console lol.

Seriously though, I'd be utterly gobsmacked if Sony didn't come up with their version of the Switch for the PS5. Not that I'm complaining though TBF.

Sony can go suck a golf ball through a garden hose :3

Which is why I kept telling folks Sony wouldn't deliver vita 2 in 2015, 2016, 2017 E3. You can't have anything when even the big managerial folks in Sony don't even favor handhelds anymore. But the little folks out there kept arguing n debating this n that kind of crap. You can have hopes but the moment you stepped beyond facts without even the slightest cue from manufacturers, suppliers, that's where their logic had become flawed. A product, if it's going to be in beta release, many different suppliers will leak first-hand info. . Perhaps little folks really not in supply chain or semicon industries... that should be it.

Vita failed for so many other reasons, love how he ignores the 3DS and how Nintendo turned that situation around.

Personally, home consoles are in the process of shooting themselves in the foot. They're focusing on 4K console revisions, while the standards of good game design get tossed aside.

Luckily, JPN devs carried the torch and brought us a phenomenal release schedule on PS4. If not for that, Uncharted, and Hellblade; this would've been a boring year for home consoles.

@maruse And let's not forget those wonderful memory card prices.

@machomuu Ditto that!

Without a portable system seller like Pokemon under their belt, I doubt a sony handheld will ever be a huge market opportunity for them.

Didn't that clown super metal Dave predict Sony would announce another handheld.

He is a clown and just took another L

"We had our rears handed to us on a platter in this area, therefore we will be dismissive from now on and claim there is no market (ergo Vita failed".

Sure Sony, whatever you say.

@DragonEleven Switch didn't outsold Vita yet, but I'm sure it will do that in few months.

(Vita sold 14+ mln systems)

Well, he kind of HAS to say all this.

This from the same company that feels the industry needs to waste consumers money on making games look better!! Or there future thinking with regards to VR, a format that is more likely to lose customers in the long term.

If Nintendo can keep things going well then I can see them losing their mantle in the long term.

I'm glad Sony and Nintendo have their own different strategies. It means we get the different products that we do rather than just clones like X1 v's PS4...

Great... Another big name reiterating what we all already know.

I disagree with him, the Vita failed because Sony blundered with it in every single way possible.
Sony's strategy is about power and sure, a handheld doesn't fit in that. But he can't deny that there are customers that want portability - either in their own homes or going out.

@QwertyQwerty 'cause as everybody knows "Sony NEVER copies", right? 😆

Vita as hardware was everything 3ds should be (obviously without 3d duh). But as support, games and everything else it was a disaster. I basically bought it so i can play Persona 4 golden on the go.

Anyway back on topic Sony have no reason to go back to handheld business. Sadly i agree with the dude. PS Vita 2 or whatever would only be an even bigger flop. Switch is something unique and i hope it will show there's still room in the market for dedicated mobile consoles

It could be that any company in this day and age has to focus either on handheld or console. Sony chose console and Nintendo have chosen handheld.

It's easy to understand Sony's thinking: Mobile gaming is the trend in Japan, to make console relevant it's better to make a powerful home console that plays cutting edge games.

Nintendo on the other hand is using reverse-psychology. Since mobile is popular, then make a mobile console that plays high quality games. Mobile game is a gateway drug to video games, female and older people who never played games were introduced to them through mobile devices. Once they start playing, and want better games then Switch is a natural choice.

There is NO ps vita games that attracted me. Completely ZERO. Even there is at least 1 or 2 (Just only PS one classics), they are NOT Worthy for me.

3DS is the Winner. I got 30 3DS games right now. 3DS Library games are MUCH MUCH MUCH Better than Boring ps vita games.

Sony...........You dumb FU**S!!! The Vita failed here because you failed to support it. The 3ds was a weaker less powerful handheld and it outsold even consoles, you Dumb Motherfu****S. The problem isn't peoples interest but rather your own interest. You failed at promoting it so bad the WiiU seemed to have more promotion in its first year. The fault isn't on the market, it's on you not supporting your own console outside of Japan.

@Nincompoop
Hooo....
So, I wonder if I introduce Nintendo Switch with some Mobile games that already inside....
Especially AOV, Wonder if Casual gamers will Shocked by that news (AOV on Nintendo Switch)....

"Highly connected gaming experience". What about cross-play?

I call [removed]. If they haven't seen it as affecting their business in Japan,then why isn't the new MH on Switch?with the rumour Sony went out of their way to make sure it didn't release on the Switch knowing how huge it is in Japan and has been for the 3ds in recent years.Another [removed] statement from Sony.The arrogance has returned the same as after ps2 dominated sales in that generation.Poor show Sony. I really wouldn't put it past them to make their own version of the Switch concept and promote it as their own new idea.And the irony would be the Sony fanboys all of a sudden praising the idea

@Rayquaza2510 I should probably have elaborated by adding that I was looking at comparable time periods... specifically the months following release.
Vita launched Dec11-Feb12, and had sold 2.2 million by June 2012.
Switch launched March 2017, and had sold 4.7 million by June 2017.
It took the Vita over a year to reach the same numbers that the Switch has achieved in just a few months, and at it's current rate of sales, the Switch will pass the Vita's lifetime sales within a year.

There is a tale in Greek culture about a fox that couldn't jump high enough to catch the grapes...... i see the similarities here

@PlayedNSlayed
Also, some latest ps4 games are not really impressing at all. Something wrong with gaming on ps4 right now.

@arpaktiko
Let me guess, the fox said the grapes was sour, not yummy.
Same like ps vita vs Switch case.

@PlayedNSlayed
Japanese sales numbers for PS4 have remained the same since the Switch launched, so he's not wrong.

@Anti-Matter
Care to elaborate on that? There's nothing wrong with gaming on PS4 right now.

"The Vita experience was that outside of Japan and Asia, there was not a huge demand. The lifestyle shift toward the dominance of smartphones as the single key device that is always with you, was the determining factor."

I dunno, Nintendo seemed to manage to shift a lot of 3DSes.

You can't fool me Sony, you know very well that you're making a handheld. Bringing the smartphone thing as a reason not to make one is not a good excuse since 3DS and Switch did it just fine. Only reason people buy smartphone is cause they are phones and only casual play games on those and when it comes to games for those kind of people, it's games like Candy Crush, Angry Bird, Pokemon Go, and Clash of Clan. It's just time killer title to help them get through plane rides or short break between work.

Seems like a rational form of sour grapes given they're 2 for 2 trying the handheld at a console level device that flopped hard, and far harder the second go around. They don't want to dwell on the fact they're incapable of selling and sustaining a mobile device, yet they also respect what Nintendo did so they closed the door on it, don't want to draw comparisons, and bring up the classic phones are killing handheld argument. Perhaps that's why the Switch isn't a handheld, it's a console too — you gobble up from both areas and a third group who didn't really want either but would want both.

Sony is to blame if only they supported the vita more and not favoured the ps4 then yeah It would have made them tons more money. No 1st party support = low sales and support from other 3rd parties. what do they expect.!......

More like we won't take another shot at it after our first two attempt failed.

Don't let Super Metal Dave read this article.

@Anti-Matter to each their own, but I think regardless of my preferences, Sony has had a really great 2017 gaming lineup, sure not all these games are for me, but they are in no way wavering under any pressure from Nintendo or Microsoft. So you can have your extreme Nintendo biases if you want, but to state such falsehoods is an extremely tiring fanboy-ism.

Was it the lifestyle shift to smartphones, or the expensive memory cards, proprietary cables, awful support, and the fact that people didn't want to spend $250-$300 on just a handheld, especially back in 2011? It's as if Sony shot themselves in the foot and blamed smartphones for pulling the trigger.

We don't need t he hybrid twins to replace the HD twins. Let Nintendo be unique here.

@JHDK Oh man if we thought he looked salty when the Switch released...but then again he'll say that's not the big announcement. Guy's a clown.

I'd love a new Sony handheld.

I have the feeling just by anecdotal evidence that Nintendo have found again a new market for the Switch, all the "old" people above 20-something. I, like many people around, have family and job and I don't have enough time for gaming, even if I really love it. Switch has been amazing for squeezing the time for playing. Sony has been attracting the young adults, but the "real" adults has been left behind.

What a rude, nasty person!

@Clipo Agree, although the "real" adults still game on PS4/XBOX. The amount of time is limited, so for me the portability of Switch is nice, but not a game changer in terms of how much I play. But for those bigger games, RPG's and the like, I am more likely to finish or even start them on a machine that i can move around. So for me it's being able to access those genres (the long expansive journeys) that I will never touch on my PS4 (even though I want to). If Persona 5 were to come out on Switch, that would be game-changing for me.

These Sony fools...

I love this article, jealous much there Sony .

@Clipo
Don't sell 60 million consoles by leaving behind 'real adults.'

Full disclosure- my love for the vita is mostly what got me to early adopt the Switch. I love Sony, and to this day wish they had loved the Vita in the west. So much potential ruined by greed and ineptitude.

Really the Switch and the PS4 aren't completely different experiences. I don't think Sony could do what Nintendo is doing with the Switch, I don't think Nintendo could do what Sony is doing with the PS4.

I prefer Sony sticks to home consoles, becusee if they DID get in the portable/hybrid market, I just know they would add a bunch of propriety expensive nonsense. The only wish is that I could play some of the great games on my PS4 on the go. At least Persona, I still have half of P5 to finish, and I wish I could play it on the Switch.

@WiltonRoots It's so annoying to me because I only read about his incorrect Switch predictions after his failed Sony prediction. If I knew about that I wouldn't have taken this new round of rumors seriously at all. He fooled with the Sony portable announcement rumors and I should have known better.

@RoomB31
Well, I got 9 titles of ps4 games on my shopping list so far (I put Yonder the Cloud Catcher Chronicles as the 9th titles that I can buy) but there are NO ps vita games that can attracted me. Completely None of them. I have checked from playasia for the titles, found Nothing to buy.

@JHDK
Soo.... rumour about vita 2 is false, right ?

@Gamer83 Of course, but even if you have the console, you don't use it much, at least less than you would like it to use. In my case I always have a good gaming pc but I'm not using it much.

When you fail twice I can see why they'd think that. I would actually love Sony to give it a third shot, The Vita was a great system ruined by poor choices.

@Anti-Matter SMD is still trying to hype some big Sony announcement but yes, all signs point to it being false.

@RoomB31
Um... actually I don't like "Real Adult" label for gamers at all.
Why should I labeled with such a Horrible degree ?
I'm 33 but Love Kiddie , Cute, Colorful, Girlie, totally Opposite with "Real Adult" label.
My label is "Kiddie" and i'm happy with my choice.
Just because i'm already adult it doesn't mean I "have to" like Adultery things like that.

@RoomB31 I was talking just by reading in forums ans places like that, many people has been talking about playing again because with family and kinds there is not much time for playing. Even if you have the console, you don't use it much, at least is has been my case with my gaming pc. People are discovering again that they can still play videogames, even if you don't have much time, because you can play full console games commuting or meanwhile your partner is watching tv.

@Anti-Matter Me neither, I'm 32 by the way. I was talking about adults with jobs, family life and responsibilities, when you are 20-something, you are an adult but you don't have the responsibilities of a grownup up. I still love Nintendo and the color and the music of Mario or Zelda.

@Anti-Matter So you say "something is wrong with PS4 gaming right now" but you save 9 PS4 games to your must buy list....

........still love my vita.

@Anti-Matter real adult refers only to people ACTUALLY being real Adults! nothing in those comments were about "ADULT" games... like what you like, at whatever age. But don't misread what I or @Clipo wrote.

@Mart1ndo The head of Sony. It’s so rude to blame the failure of the vita on the consumer when they didn’t even support it. And it just annoys me so much when they treat Nintendo like they aren’t threat at all. And he completely ignored how well the 3Ds did in a smartphone world.

@Clipo
Hm...
My case is different.
I still live with my Mom and my siblings.
I have my job (As Librarian, Drawing teacher, Substitute teacher for Primary school), my siblings also have their jobs (continuing my Father's old shop, my Mom is helping my two young brothers as the shop owner). My littlest sister have her job also.

But for me, i'm still Single (All the Single Lads, All the Single Lads....)
I'm 33, still Happy to be Single. I never thinking about making Family, Big No No for me. I live with my own choice, have much time for Video gaming. My Mom is okay with my decision to be a Single forever. So, even I aged to Elder stage, I still spend my fun time with Video games. Age doesn't matter for me. I have an Everlasting Love with certain games (such as Dance Dance Revolution, The Sims series, Harvest Moon series, etc), the Love that will Never fades by years.

@RoomB31
Well, pardon of my horrible Engrish.. I mean English.

Oh, Sony. I loved the PS3, it was the perfect compliment to the my Wii and early days of the Wii U. But I can't take anything they say seriously after what they pulled with the Playstation Move. When I saw the reveal for it at that year's E3, I actually felt warm-faced embarrassment for them. I couldn't believe how blatantly/desperately they were trying to cash-in on the Wii's success at the time, instead of just sticking to the strengths of the PS3.

@Anti-Matter I just don't like to be misquoted

@Anti-Matter Nice for you, but at least in my case things has been different. My dad also was a gamer, an old school one, thanks to him I played a lot of Doom and C&C during the 90s and he had exactly the same problem. He always complained about not having enough time for gaming and I always thought but you always have time. Now that I am with a job and a family I fully understand him and Switch has been a really nice opportunity for me.

So much salt and revisionist history. This isn't Sony blaming consumers, and they didn't stop supporting the Vita after a few months, it got first party titles for over 2 years.

The reality is that the Vita didn't bring anything that was really wanted by a lot of people, and their idea of console fidelity games on a handheld wasn't feasible back then. When you have an idea that doesn't really work and isn't desirable, it's unsurprising to see it underperform. See Nintendo's Wii U.

@RoomB31
Yes, but All my PS4 games that on my list are rated Everyone, Everyone 10+ and Teen. NO Rated M whatsoever. Here is my list :
1. Earthlock: Festival of Magic, E 10+
2. Overcooked: Gourmet Edition, E
3. Portal Knights : Gold Throne Edition, E 10+
4. World of Final Fantasy, E 10+
5. Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 HD Remix, E 10+
6. Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, Teen
7. Final Fantasy XII : The Zodiac Age, Teen
8. The Sims 4, Teen
9. Yonder : The Cloud Catcher Chronicles, PEGI 3

But, 3 games on above (number 1, 2 & 3) will make debut on Switch so I can "Switch" to Nintendo Switch version and those my PS4 games can be stay at shelf for long times not being played ( I placed them as Decorative items). Because I still choose Nintendo side if the games are available on Switch. But if it doesn't or not yet released on Switch, I will choose ps4 version as Alternative choices. My Love with Nintendo Switch is 100 % but with PS4 just only 50 % right now.

Translation: There's a huge market but we sadly don't know how to tap it. Also, the competition solved both for that and its lingering presence in the console space and now is a potential disruptor to our business.

Their excuse is just baffling. Smartphones are not the main reason why Vita failed. It's THEIR fault. Vita had a ton of potential, but was mistreated and poorly executed.

Using smartphones as an excuse is just pathetic. The same could be said for the 3DS and look how successful the thing is.

@SanderEvers I think that is by far the smartest thing MS has done lately. Why compete with the king of the turf when you can reap benefits from them at a much lower cost. Sony tried to be the Jack of all trade with the Vita but they realise that they will have become the Master of none like what happened to Xbox one when they introduced their exclusive games available on both Windows and Xbox. Screw them over big time as general public will have a PC already and is less likely to invest into their platform unless necessary. So I suppose they now learned their lesson and just reap the benefits from Nintendo as they would've needed to invest billions before they could have potentially release a handheld of their own. At that point they are still over 50/50 on the successful of their product. The risk and gain is not balanced enough to make it worth.

Sony didn't support the Vita nuff said, the 3DS launched and had troubling sales, Nintendo upped the ante with it's releases and saved it and it turned out to be a huge success.

Count me in on the bandwagon of disdain for Vita memory card prices. I considered getting the Vita, but could never get past how aggressively Sony was trying to rip people off. Yes, smartphones have eroded the handheld market, but that doesn't mean there wasn't enough room for Vita. It wasn't handled well at all.

Hmm to be clear, the handheld market is dipping, if not drying up. If you look at handheld sales from the different generations, sales have steadily been dipping.

Sony did the Vita all wrong but I would argue that they have a point in that the handheld market is tougher to break into then when they introduced the PSP. Nintendo are great with handhelds, the DS did gangbusters and the 3DS did well but even that saw a big dip from its predecssors. Smart phones are certainly a part of it. I would also argue that development costs are another - dev costs on handhelds are tradtionally far lower than consoles but the power of handhelds has upped the dev cost.

I think Sony are just stating the obvious, they can't see an immediate benefit to entering the handheld market again after they failed so much with the Vita. Nintendo have done very well with the Switch to make a case for its existence, by going the hybrid route. Is the handheld market big enough to sustain the Switch and a Sony competitor? I doubt it, at least not to the size of the DS and PSP days.

The arrogance of Sony. I hope Nintendo wipe them out someday.

@Rudy_Manchego
Not really. Smartphones may be growing in popularity, but I wouldn't say it hurts the handheld market. Besides, every Nintendo handheld sold better than the previous one until the 3DS. The Switch is already set in motion to outsell the DS. The handheld market is still there, just need to make careful decisions and make people happy. Sony did the complete opposite and blames the smartphone boom.

How is PSVR doing? Between Vita and it I'm thinking Sony is a little shy about taking chances ar the moment and they have a good selling piece of hardware out so I'd expect them to be conservative.......especially if the PS4 Pro isn't quite as successful as they had hoped.

@Gerbwmu
VR is such a waste from Sony.
Very few interesting titles, decent looking gameplay, damn expensive VR Set = Big No No for me.
Sony has dumped also Eye Toy & PS Move.

Another Vita doesn't interest me, but I'd buy Xperia Play 2. Owned the first one, it was great but underpowered.

They likely can't figure out a way to make a hybrid that puts out base ps4 graphics with any sort of battery life and not be a hot brick. I'm fairly certain given the obsession with graphics that has overtaken the gaming industry they know a ps5 or a vita 2 that looks worse or only marginally better than its predecessors won't fly. Also with the Switch doing as well as it is and 3ds devs beginning to migrate over, they know especially now if they do a pure handheld they will be sending it out to die.

If the switch is selling this well and it hasn't had most of the 3ds devs transition yet, it will be nuts once Level 5 and the like hop on over ...Plus pokemon. I can see why Sony doesn't want to throw a hat into this race.

@MrGamerClock64 You might be right. At the end of the day, I can play (as an averge consumer) good quality titles on my phone or tablet without the need for a bespoke piece of hardware. I also carry it around with me everywhere. If mobile gaming wasn't a threat to handhelds and a source of revenue, I would question why Sony and Nintendo are both starting to produce mobile titles.

Of course sales data is limited, the PSP sold over 80 million, the DS sold something like 150 million while the Vita sold 13 million and the 3DS 60 million. Now, we can argue back and forth for reasons (the DS was a blip like the Wii, the Vita was totally mishandled by Sony etc.) and I am not brazen enough to say it is all mobile gamings fault but, again, for people that just want to pick up and play on their commute, their mobiles can provide just as engaging a title as a handheld. It is just one possible explanation for the current handheld gen blip in figures.

This is why, I believe, that Nintendo is wisely pushing the Switch as a hybrid. A home console you can play outside rather than pushing purely as a handheld. It's pretty much saying, this is more than just a handheld. If handheld gaming was that strong, why not just say, this is a great handheld with the added benefit of a dock?

@Gerbwmu VR is doing fairly well but it is an odd product. Sales are I think between 1 million to 1.5 million. These aren't huge numbers but then they have been deliberately conservative with their estimates and sales projections (they had a huge supply shortage after launch because they didn't make very many).

Sony have done a better than expected job of delivering content, though said content is often shorter then a standard triple A. I own one and don't feel short changed in the same way as an owner the Move would do for PS3.

I think Sony want VR as an asset moving forward, almost as future tech. I am still on the fence as to whether VR has much of a future. I don't think it is a failure because, unlike the Vita, they haven't been really pushing it in the same way. It's an odd beast. I would say there is too much going on with the PS4 and VR to think about another handheld at the same time.

@JHDK maybe announcement is a high-powered Sony smartphone since smartphone gaming is so big. 😛

@Rudy_Manchego
Smartphones aren't well known for quality games on it. Yeah, there's some good games on the thing, but by looking at the top 10 apps and games on both App Store and Google Play, they're all free to play games. People don't want core games similar to a home console or even a handheld. Besides, PS4 sales are also around 60 million units, still under the PS3 and way below PS2 sales. Does that mean PCs are the main cause of that "low sales"?

@SanderEvers RE Microsoft on Switch.

That would be a very smart move for both. Nintendo finally getting Microsoft into the behemoth of Japanese gaming, and Nintendo getting more high tier IPs.

Can see it happening, considering the Minecraft and crossplay partnerships have gone well.

That's kind of funny. Granted, the fact that Sony doesn't take it as a direct threat is Nintendos #1 reason for persuinig this direction rather than the "Nintendo XBox" fans seem to want. If they directly challenged Sony, Sony would come at them with both barrels and a spare in the holster to take them out, with resources Nintendo couldn't stop. Even Microsoft's unlimited resources have hit a wall in that game. This route gives them an end run around Sony where Sony (at least pretends to) shrug it off with an idgaf.

But it's still funny. Sony doesn't see a market in handheld gaming, citing as the proof their own colossally failed handheld, that they abandoned immediately after launch by racing to their new shiny the PS4, that got steamrolled by Nintendo's in every region and twice in Japan. Sorry, Sony, I represented the Western demand for Vita and it's content. I can't buy something that doesn't exist. I bought the Vita.....and the content never showed.

Then they highlight smartphones as the cause of this lack of demand like it's 2009. Ignoring that 3DS (and now Switch) don't seem hampered by phones. Ignoring that they're a phone maker and their phones have always been at the bottom of the list in sales. And ignoring they're not engaged in the phone games market while Nintendo is

But they're committed to a "highly connected gaming experience" (what does that mean? Are not handhelds connected? Am I not playing Splatoon, ARMS, and Pokken daily on my Switch? Does that mean they are racing into always-online games as a service (which solidifies my like for handheld more)? Why does everything need to be "connected" Why must we live every moment of our lives on the internet? And when did Sony figure out how to build a network that doesn't collapse under its own weight? )

All in all it's plain funny. I'm GLAD Sony's not considering it a threat, because I don't want Sony breathing down Nintendo's back. But the rationale is surreal. There's enough yarn being spun here to build an army of Yoshis and Sackboys. Sony is sounding more and more like "old Reggie" every day, while Reggie's sounding almost human these days.

Just say it like it is Sony: "We've demonstrated for well over a decade that we can't figure out handheld no matter how much money we throw at the problem. We thought our problem is nobody wanted to spend resources on a powerful handheld, but now Switch proved that wrong too. So we're just going to fall back to the area we know what we're doing and stick with TV entertainment center devices like we've been successful with since the 70's." There, fixed it for ya' Andy!

Nintendo is giving more support to 3DS this year than Sony ever gave Vita for its entire existence. That might be part of why it wasn't successful in most of the world.

@MrGamerClock64 Well for a start, the discussion of the PS4 being less successful is debatable. In fact, at 43 months (so July), the PS4 was lagging 8 million units behind where the PS3 and XB360 combined were at during the same point in lifecyle. Since the PS3 sold 80 million units in 10 years or so, I think it is very likely the PS4 will match or exceed the PS3. However, you might have a point. Is the rise in PC gaming eating into console sales overall? Probably to some extent.

Anyway, with handhelds, the 'casual' handheld gamer that made the DS the lightning in a bottle success doesn't really exist in my mind because they can get the mild distraction from mobiles.

There is still a dedicated handheld consumer group - I'm one of them but I am not sure it is big enough now to support a Sony competitor as well as Nintendo. I for one, as a Switch owner, wouldn't buy another handheld of similar specs and price. I think Nintendo have done very well with the Switch and Sony following suit would just result in more failure for them.

While he's right that smartphone gaming has taken away from dedicated gaming portables, Nintendo proved that there's still a strong market. The much bigger issue here, as a lot of people have already noted is Sony's own doing. They stopped making games for it like 2 years in. They didn't advertise it after the initial release. The memory cards were and are still(facepalm) highway robbery. Etc. Such a shame because even though the DS outsold the PSP, the PSP still did well. And it had plenty of good 1st party PlayStation titles, unlike the Vita. I have a Vita and for the most part, enjoy it( the memory card prices are a hurdle for digital titles though) but the wasted potential is pretty sad.

What makes the Switch attractive is its Flexibility. Flexibility between tv and handheld mode, controller options and setups. You can play with a pro controller, joy con controllers, motion control, single joy con, and touch screen. These offer multiple ways to play games and game types. Its Flexibility offers a great pick up and go option. Not just outside the home, but inside as well. I can play it upstairs, downstairs, outside on a bench in my backyard. Im not tethered to a room and that feels great.

And while many think smartphones are the new portable game market, i see the Switch as the first Tablet/Smartphone that plays full on conosole games. No tablet or smartphone in the market can do that.

Flexibility is its success.

@MsgBoardGamer "Western AAA games that focus on the "latest and greatest graphics" continue to wildly popular. Gamers everywhere continue to demand prettier games, faster games, and grander games. The diminishing returns phenomenon has no effect of these gamers' preferences...at all."

Popularity matters in message board wars. Profitability matters to the companies that make these things. Right now they're on an express train to bankrupting themselves very popularly. Selling 10 million of something you make $.20 each on is worse than selling 2 million of something you make $10 each on in reality, but the internet will declare company "A" the winner.

The fancy high end graphics cards are premium products sold at extremely high margins. Big profit there, sure, but it's a niche market. Much like selling $20,000 boutique amplifiers is very high profit, but represents a very tiny fraction of the audio market. The big sellers are the mid tier cards that are commoditized.

The games themselves....yes, customers demand them. And buy them. But as costs rise, and the games themselves haven't even caught up with inflation, the companies are making ends meet by selling every more DLC, season passes, and piecemeal content. At some point there will be one straw too many. The wrong DLC on the wrong game at the wrong time, in the wrong economic climate. And then it unwinds.

No matter your thoughts on Nitnendo, Sony, or $3000 PC gaming rigs, all that preference is irrelevent. The one fact is the AAA model can not be sustained indefinitely. It's an ugly house of cards built by their unwillingness to constrain budgets in the face of "customer demand." Especially after they themselves encouraged that demand early on.

PC may be gaining but most of that at this point is driven by how "cheap" downloadable games on Steam are on sale. That's not helping close the gap on these high budget AAA games. They couldn't fund the budget at $60 let alone $20 blowout sales.

No matter WHAT platform or game type you prefer, I'd expect a massive shakeup this decade. The current business model just won't work perpetually. If the indies can organize into the more commercial software houses they once were, companies like WayForward and Playtonic, we may be able to shake off the Atari-like disaster looming from the budget holes.

@XenoShaun What IPs does Microsoft have? Halo and Gears? The abandoned Fable? Flight Simulator? Kinektimals? Microsofts problem is they have almost no IP, and that's hurting them in their war with Sony. I'm hoping for lots of XBox - Nintendo cooperation in a lot of ways, but Nintendo gaining IP is definitely not one of them.

@RoomB31 Same in terms of the big games. But it's both. The small games I can pick up and play moments here and there. I'm currently chipping away at rayman one level at a time. I never opened it for WiiU. It's great! And at the same time it's way more doable for the big epics too. My PS4 hasn't been booted since March 2nd. I'm desperate to play P5...but I don't see myself actually starting it any time at least until 2018....and then I'll have more Switch games I want to play including 2 RPG epics (Tried playing Skyrim on 360....and gave up after a game (and save) breaking bug ended it early on.) As long as instant-on hybrid gaming systems exist, thats where my gaming time will go, I think.

@NEStalgia To my knowledge Microsoft has a butt ton of dormant IP still. So who knows. Would love a Fable on Switch. Forza would be nice too to cover the race sims Nintendo always miss out on.

Might not be much Microsoft actively supports IP wise but the opportunity with Nintendo could open doors to those old ignored fellas.

Plus all Rare IPs will be on the table again.

The Vita was a Wii U-esque failure with significantly less software sales globally, so yeah, I can see why Sony no longer has any interest in dedicated portable gaming.

PS4 and Switch can and will exist together. Not every platform needs to be a powerful power-hungry dedicated home console, and not every platforn needs to be a flexible but weaker hybrid device.

BTW I hope this interview puts to rest those dumb rumors that Sony is making a PS Vita 2/PSP3 or a "PS4-Go"

Whenever I read comments from Sony execs relating to the Vita (or Sega in that same boat for that matter), it makes me wonder how they can be so disconnected from the gaming world.

I'm not an exec with all the numbers, but I am a consumer with a solid interest in the market and I can say without a doubt that the primary reason for soft sales with Vita was not the mobile phone market, as much as they would like it to be. It was overly clear to both media and consumers that even many of the better games were 'portable' versions of full AAA games instead of the full fledged versions. Excellent games were few and far between with most being just 'satisfactory', especially at launch, which of course I guess lead to low sales which turned off new devs further. There were little numbers popular established Sony game franchises or the ones that were there were not great, portable versions as mentioned or simply a different game with the same name. Memory cards which were basically essential were an unbelievable rippoff, and propietary. Noteably, fuctionality and feature updates seemed far less frequent than simply security and stability updates to prevent people 'hacking' it for example... which ironically, it seems hacking it is a major reason that people want the console now (for things like homebrew or PS1 games). Useability, including the single user account system were big turn-offs and simply annoying as a family device.

Long story short, the launch, sofware, games and overall package could have been great with some better organisation and better decisions from the company. A good piece of hardware, managed terribly.

Sony has their piece of the pie, and Nintendo has theirs, all is well. I'll be eating my Nintendo pie.. in golden triangular pieces

@Rudy_Manchego
Question for VR, How many games that requires VR ?
How many developers that want to take it seriously with VR ?
The answer can be predicted, A FEW !
And it wasting the chance like Eye Toy and Move.
Especially Move (Yuck...) was a Jealousy of Sony about Wii mote.

@NEStalgia
Hahahaha....
About ps4, same with me.
Actually I don't have ps4 machine yet.
I have ps4 games first, will buy the machine on April 2018, but because the games I want are not on Switch (yet).
I have 3 games from ps4 that will be on Switch too, and I will gleefully jump to Switch version, neglecting the ps4 version.

@Clipo
Well, I don't have a family but I do work a lot so I'm not always home. Would definitely consider myself a 'real' adult and many of my friends who also have the PS4 are in similar situations, some of them actually are married with kids. We all still find time to game. Granted not as much as we would like but it's not like the console just sits there either. I've noticed the gaming time I've put into PS4 hasn't been as much the past 6 months since the Switch has been out but that's not because of a feeling of being left behind or whatever, it's the strength of the lineup on the Switch particularly in regards to content coming from Nintendo itself.

@Anti-Matter there are over 100 games that support PSVR in various ways with some bigs ones coming in the future (Doom VR, Skyrim VR, GT Sport, etc). I have had one since launch and havent regretted the purchase at all. Was not too crazy exspensive and i feel Ive gotten my moneys worth already.

The Ps Move controllers are compatible with the ps4 and many PSVR titles.

@arpaktiko There was also a tale of a guy who couldn't afford all the Indie games this week. It was called eShop's Fables!

@redd214
But still....
Those titles are not Charming as Nintendo have.
I have checked all the Rated Everyone, Everyone 10+ , Teen VR games and found NONE of them are interesting.
I found the titles looked too generic with decent looking, not charming as Nintendo did. Yes, indeed in HD but I felt nothing about gameplay and my engagement about VR games.
And No thanks for Moves (Yuck...)
Wiimote feels better than that ugly Moves.
I guess my chosen 9 PS4 games without VR Requirement are enough to entertaining me (for a while until the Switch version available, I will jump one by one to Switch version, neglecting the ps4 version).

@Anti-Matter Haha, yep. So far it's Rayman (never unwrapped the WiiU one), Kart, and Skyrim I'm double dipping on Switch with. If FF XV does come to Switch, that will be another. Pretty much anything that comes to Switch I'd double dip if I already have it on PS4 and it's still in shrinkwrap (which is most things), though to be honest other than Persona 5, FF XV, and Assassin's Creed (I have a weak spot for that series....I like the trip into history ), there aren't many big PS4 games that aren't Sony first party that I want to play. Monster Hunter....but I don't like to talk about that anymore....

@MsgBoardGamer Yeah, I was really talking more about the diminishing returns on the games themselves more than the hardware. Neither MS nor Sony are really selling particularly fancy hardware. X1S is arguably a little fancy. It's not overwhelmingly powerful compared to PC but the form factor and cooling solution make it unique. But the X1/PS4/PS4 pro (and to a degree X1X are all just "commodity" hardware. No real profiteering, nor exorbitant expense in hardware. It's the games industry itself that's the real issue. We can get a PS6 that runs like SLI'd Titans, and we can keep demanding games that push them....but eventually they cost more to make than they can ever hope to earn selling them. And then the hardware becomes meaningless.

They tried replicating film in the game world, but in film all you have to do is point a camera at what you want people to see. You can do it with cheap sets and costumes or expensive ones, great cameras or mediocre ones, but it's still just as real. for games you have to create that reality pixel by pixel to a degree that would make Rankin & Bass shudder. "Realistic" can never be cost comparable to film. Sure blockbusters spend even more than the top games (for now) but most of what's at Cannes spends considerably less.

I'd be curious how much money Sony makes (or loses) on their first party games. We'll never know. I wouldn't doubt they're selling at a loss in a lot of cases. They make it back on subs, DLC, and licensing from other games. A jumbo electronics manufacturer/insurance company can afford such things. The game publishers that only do games can't. Though I'd argue Sonys' far from the forefront of pushing graphics. They build for their, in reality, low grade hardware just like Nintendo does. Nothing like what, say, Ubisoft does with AC pushing PC to the limits. In that sense Sony's not much more part of the AAA problem than Nintendo. And poor MS hardly makes games. Forza pushes graphics....Ori certainly doesn't, nor does Sea of Thieves.

"but it's almost as if these big name third-parties who keep selling AAA games in the many millions have gotten their second wind."

I think it's more the other way around. If you look at the direction of AAA's midway through the PS3 gen, then look at where those studios are now, they're starting to back off that model, mostly. Ubisoft has many more "small" games than they did. Squeenix has massively gone back into smaller games. The big ones coming out were already in the pipeline back then. They still do their big AAAs but they're not focusing exclusively on them anymore, relying on diversity more than "well if this tanks....." Which is good. EA, notably, is still on the full AAA model as is 2k and sort of THQ/Nordic (though their games were questionably never AAA.) Warner....they're oddly quiet now aren't they?

I still don't think they've gone far enough, but there's enough sign that they're all seeing the writing on the wall and testing the waters with scaling back. Which is a REALLY good thing. Octopath is a game that wouldn't have seemed possible 6 years ago. Bomberman is arguably too small, but signs that Konami is considering life after MGS. Rabbids, Southpark, Starlink didn't seem like something ubi could do back then. But for now they're just test balloons. Capcom is going the other way, ignoring their small and medium games and going only for things that can capture the big sales....so far it's not looking to work so well though. I thing slow subtle corrections are ideal....if the EA type model drags everyone with them, it'll crash hard. One thing in our favor is a lot of that push toward "AAA or bust" was brought on by Microsoft. That was their vision, shared by EA, for the future of the industry. It started in earnest with the X-Box, and continued through the 360. Now that XBox has faltered and shows sloth-like sales, it almost seems like thats catalyst for the industry to reconsider that model. PS4's success may have actually saved us.

You're right about gamers lining up to play the latest game with the latest graphics. Where it becomes unsustainable is the moment when the price doesn't align with perceived value. They can't keep charging $60 or less forever. They either have to jack up the initial price, or gouge more on add on content. Or adopt a whale model. Gamers hate the whale model. And gamers hate higher price. So they'll keep gouging on add on content one straw at a time, on one very moody camel that's prone to epic meltdowns on the internet. If the price remained the same forever, of course everyone would enjoy it always being prettier. But there comes a point when someone has to pay for all that pretty, and it won't be the shareholders.

Sony might be missing their own opportunity not taking a step back or sideways with mobile tech. Not necessarily a handheld, but a hybrid type device. Heck, MS is no doubt considering it since they're already knee deep in mobile devices in the Surface line, and going directly against Sony's not really working for them. If MS dips their toes in the mobile gaming business, Sony could be the odd one out with a "DVD player that plays games" come the PS5 era.

Not that I'm not enjoying Nintendo being the sole entrant to that field.

@Anti-Matter how can you say a wiimote is better than a move controller. Do you own any move controllers. Have you tried it. It's more accurate

@Anti-Matter was just answering your question bud. Im fully aware of your very "selective" gaming habits. But just because YOU arent interested doesnt mean the content isnt there.

@LuckyLand The thing is, Sony doesn't bring and hasn't brought anything to the table except under powered gaming PC's in a cheap plastic case and the fanboys gobble them up. The Vita was more out there and their base just didn't care. They remind me of Tim the Toolman Taylor...More power. All the while being severely under powered compared to a good gaming pc at the time. I've owned every Sony system along with every other system out there. I bought the Sony systems for the exclusive and nothing more. Since having the Switch, I'm finding it harder and harder for me to set time aside to tie myself to my TV to play any of my other systems. I'm mobile and now so are most of my favorite games.

@MariOnline
The Charming that I felt.
It's not about which is more accurate.
Wii mote made with Love.
While Moves made with Envy /Jealousy.
Which should I choose ?
Of course, the things that made with Love and Passion by Nintendo.
And Moves (Ew...) looks like a Deodorant bottle with Crystal Ball on top. No thanks.I don't even want to buy any.
I will stick on regular ps4 sticks.

@Deadstanley I totally agree, and it's sad because I'm a supporter of all consoles and handhelds (though I prefer handhelds as I'm always traveling). Sony should just straight up kill the vita, and give some attention to the VR.

@redd214
I'm very Selective about gaming.
My Biggest Rules and Should be Obeyed is Age Rating.
I will not allowed Rated M games in my gaming place whatsoever reasons.
That's my Biggest Filter for any video games.

About VR games, I have ever saw the titles like Billyard , Eagle, VR Kart, etc. Indeed, that's for Everyone but.... I felt Empty. I didn't catch any glimpse of charming inside, the feeling that I must have that game. My reaction toward those games just Not Interested, No Excitement reaction, just Boring reaction.

Sony never really tried with psp and vita. I feel that if they gave it all their heart it could have beaten Nintendo considerably!

@Anti-Matter we know, you manage to mention that in almost every article you comment on lol.

@JHDK He's probably getting a fresh round of flack after this article. To be honest he brought it upon himself.

The switch is a portable, with a TV dock. the PS4 is A true home console. I won't care about the Switch at home when NinoKuni2 and Monster Hunter world are out. I won't want to play a water down version either. 2 different experience/needs

Off the record, I get a kick out of some of the people putting the blame onto Sony for the lack of Vita's sales...so, um...what about nintendo with the Wii U, where those same people were probably saying it was 3rd parties???

Anyways, Sony did good with the PSP, it was a great handheld...the VITA could have been, but nintendo had something that Sony did not...the kid-friendly, quick-fire games. Sony's games on the VITA were 'big', and not many people had time for a portable device, to play a game for 30 minutes plus, before getting a save...nintendo's would and most games were quick. Nintendo has also had the market since the Gameboy...actually before. Sega blamed others for the Game Gear, Sony blamed others for the VITA and Atari...well, there's was just plain overpriced. Other than that, the portable marked did somewhat go away. When the Gameboy released, it was game after game...the same continued all the way up to the DS. The 3DS started strong, but if you look at the past 2 years, there hasn't been a lot of games pouring out on shelves except ones made by nintendo (not saying there was none, but there wasn't as many as the other handhelds before it). Anyways, Sony is Console...always will be to me and I love them and the PS4...nintendo is different in their marketing, and right now they combined the two...Switch is great! It will be better within the next year when more games come pouring out on it. The Vita killed itself with the expensive SD Cards, but look at the 3DS when it was first released...it was failing until they massively lowered the price. Each company has it's fall down, but they can always have the opportunity to rise back up. Nintendo and Sony has showed this...PS3 was being outdone by the 360, the PS4 is dominating with the XBONE showing that Microsoft can kind of have a flop of a system (kind of a flop), and nintendo shared this with the Wii U and even before...the Virtual Boy. Phones are in right now with many people, and the Switch is too big for pockets...could this era improve or go down hill...only time tells!

And this is the exact reason Sony is not seeing a single cent coming from me anymore.
I don't have a Vita and that might be my next Sony system if I have the money to buy it with; but Sony is otherwise not going to see my money anymore, period.
The only thing that's tempting about the PS4 is the KH recollections - if my username wasn't already blatant enough - and the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. Other than that, unless Sony starts making handhelds again, they've lost an once loyal customer.

@Anti-Matter Apparently 248 games and apps.

But dude, there is an amazing amount of awesome games out there of all shapes and sizes, different platforms and peripherals. Everyone likes their own thing and that is cool. Some things become popular and some don't. I don't think there is much to things I don't like but they may have an intrinsic worth to some people. I mean some people are still developing Atari Jaguar games!! So live and let live bro, enjoy what you enjoy and realise that hating on anything beyond that is just whizzing in the wind.

Looks like Sony and Nintendo are both good at what they do best: Sony for the gold standard of home console entertainment, and Nintendo for providing the unique gaming perspective. Everyone got a role to play.

@MeloMan yep, you nailed it!

@Anti-Matter oh sorry. I didn't know the wiimote was made with love and I'm a Nintendo fan.

@MeloMan top comment

The vita is a great handheld Sony just failed to do any marketing for it which led to it not being a huge hit.

@LukeNI I disagree. No-one 'needs' an additional dock for one thing. You're also ignoring the fact that the Joy-Cons are technically two controllers in one, and pack a lot in to a tiny space, more than other controllers even since they include HD Rumble, IR Camera, improved motion controls etc.

The Vita proprietary memory card on the other hand is something a Vita user would likely 'need' and is extortionately priced in comparison.

@Agramonte This has nothing to do with the Nintendo Life article above so i don't really get why you are bringing it up here.

I think he's bluffing. The vita failed cause it failed. 3DS kicked butt all up and down town, so the cellphone argument is out the window. Personally I love the Switch and see its only drawback as that its not quite as powerful as competing systems. Otherwise, it would certainly be the king of all consoles. I mean its PORTABLE, a full console, THAT IS ALSO PORTABLE. I've been waiting for exactly that for YEARS. First cause its just awesome, second cause we deserve it and third cause I dont have alot of time to game at home.

I have no problems with their approach. They (Sony and Microsoft) can focus on big powered home consoles while Nintendo focus on less powerful but portable console which you can take with you anywhere.

I think it's totally fine having both types in the market and i hope it stays that way.

@Rudy_Manchego
Sony has the power to expand the market. Nintendo has a monopoly at the moment. Competition is good, so seeing Sony there really made things refreshing. The PSP was am amazing alternative or even a replacement to the DS since it offered something different than what the DS offered. Since they're not good at it, they've dropped out of the handheld market.

@JLPick Despite the market failure of WiiU it was still a great system filled with content. Big first party content, from Nintendo. 3rd parties abandoned it, but Nintendo sucked it up and produced content to keep their players engaged, even if it was disappointing as a total package.

With Vita, Sony almost fully abandoned it as though it did not exist, months after launch. As soon as they announced PS4, the Vita ceased to exist in their world beyond as a "I can be a WiiU too!" accessory. People defend "but the Vita DOES have games!" No it doesn't, it has indies and import weeb bait games. Normal games dried up ages ago. I bought the Vita as a pocket console to play console type games in a pick up and play manner verus my 3DS's "handheld style" games. I got burned. The WiiU was announced and promised to be everything the Vita wasn't at least within the house, and by and large, it actually WAS. There was more proper content to play on my Gamepad than there was on my Vita. So I flip your rhetorical around: How bad was Vita if the WiiU dramatically surpassed it in the same role? Of course Switch is everything both the Vita and the WiiU should have been all rolled into one. So ONE of them finally got it right, and it happens to be Nintendo.

@Henmii Sony's predicament is their brand is their home entertainment/disc format reader. If their handheld is too successful, they risk damaging or splitting their brand. It seems like they intentionally sabotage their handhelds every time they announce a home console for fear of losing momentum in their key market. This time I think they've learned their lesson and decided there's no real reason to try, they'd rather pour their effort into a single product line. Which is fine, even Nintendo wants out of supporting multiple platforms. But they've never really spent any real effort on any of their handhelds. They don't produce much first party content for them, relying on 3rd parties like they do for home console, but the 3rd parties developing for handheld are already tied to Nintendo. Now with Switch there's no "dedicated handheld" development, just a lower power console. And what would Sony gain by selling "PS4 Weak Edition" after they spent 4 years promoting POWER! Still...MS could enter the fray with Switch's success. Surface is their corporate synergy point in hardware right now. Watch this space! If MS does that they might replace Sony as my second console despite some of those sony exclusives I like.

I agree. I still prefer a true console or PC. I have bought only Gameboy back in the days and then PSP. But that's it. I'm not moved by the handheld gaming atm

I think he is right. Switch will not hurt sales of ps4.

It's going to be really interesting to see what happens with the Xbox One X of what ever they call it.

@MagnaRoader Amen brother.

The first time I heard that Nintendo switch was using a standard USB C Port I was thinking to myself that must be some kind of prototype and they're going to switch it out with some Nintendo specific Port LOL.

I am very happy with the way they did the switch I think it had more to do with Nvidia then Nintendo however. But I am glad Nintendo has embraced it.

There is truth in what Sony is saying. The money is in the mobile space even though I still hate the “free to play” model.

@NEStalgia
Man your so full of BS, SONY abandoned vita after a few months, BS. It released in 2012 and their last game was 2015 with plenty more In-between, like killzone, Tearaway 2014, Sony actually published 64 games for vita, that's alot more than Ninty did with wii u, OK not all of them were good but that's the same for any publisher. Yes it's a tragedy that they dropped vita because of ps4 but it's pointless spouting I'll informed crap that Sony abandoned vita after a few months, sounds like sour grapes from someone that got burned

@MariOnline lol... Why are we arguing over wiimotes and move controllers? That's old gen, we should let these arguments lay in the past. 😁😁😁

@Folkloner you mean outside as examples of the home big screen experience that is the active strategy he points out as a reason why a portable has had no impact on their business.

Nope non at all.

They will be saying the same thing about the console market soon too lmao.

@Randomlight "you only have indies to play and indies don't sell consoles, the half baked AAA support was also idiocy."

I hope you realize that this describes the Nintendo switch perfectly.

@EDF please list all 64 retail titles published by Sony for vita. I'll wait.

I bought killzone and tearaway and third parties like Valhallas beat em up, can't remember the name. The system had very few full retail releases by Sony, and many of them were obviously cut down almost like mobile ports. Wiiu was a first party supported system with full games. Sparse but not desolate.

Vita can't be excused. Most games came from Indies one small studios, mostly with very Japanese content. Which is fine but not what the system promised. It was abandoned.

@Anti-Matter You're delusional if you think that.

@OGGamer Except it doesn't. Unlike the Wii U the Nintendo Switch is having a steady line up of 1st and third party games. Indies are just a bonus.
The Switch isn't the next Wii-U or the Vita.

@DairyOverdrive Sorry to splash ice water on you but it actually does describe the Switch. AAA support so far IS half baked. Sure there are some quality ports but they're dumbed down ports of superior games that already appeared on more powerful hardware. So what are you left with? Indies, lots of retro ports, and half baked AAA support --->Switch.

You want to know when we can stop saying that? When AAA studios start making exclusives for the Switch. Don't attack the messenger. Its the cold hard truth.

@OGGamer
Delusional what ?
If about Wiimote vs Moves, of course I will choose Wiimote. I have no interest with Moves games, looked cheap and blah.
NOTE: I have checked the Moves games list, None of them are appeal to me. They looked cheap, too generic, no charming at all.

3DS is still huge and selling. They should say PSP was worthless and should give people their money back lol.

@MarcelRguez @Nomad They have Forza series, Gears of War, Halo series, Cuphead, and Sea of Thieves coming out as well. Forza, Gears, and Halo all have been rated highly. They said they are working on the exclusives part so we might see more next year. The pre-orders for One X sold out really quick. I don't see them shutting down any time soon.

"I don't need any sour grapes"

@Nolan420 That's what I thought, thanks.

@ANeonChicken As I said, depends on what they do next gen. Another Xbox One launch and I can see Microsoft reconsidering if it's worth the money they lose each year.

It's funny though; my PS4 has given me one essential stone cold classic that I consider a masterpiece in Bloodborne. I've had my Switch for less than half a year and already had vastly more "fun" with it, and played more games I consider essential. Personal opinion of course. 😉😊

If the vita had two more shoulder buttons instead of a useless rear touch pad, more stable streaming, and actual first party support...it probably would do quite well. The reason it is only huge in Japan is because it is basically only getting love from JRPG devs. Falcom, Atlus, Squenix, NIS localizations, Bandai-Namco with their licensed SRPGs- they basically keep it alive. And even then, half of this stuff doesn't get localized- or was cross play with PS4 and we only get the PS4 version, which cuts off potential sales (yea I'm still salty about Chaos Rings Trilogy lol)

Sad that Sony almost immediately stopped supporting this thing after 3DS took off, and then blamed the market for not liking handhelds. Which, again, if one looks to 3DS, Switch, and Japanese support of Vita, is clearly not the case.

What a silly comment.
Of course the switch is a competitor , I have not turned my ps4 on for months , and im sure alot of people have transitioned what gaming time they have over to the switch also.

If , even in small amounts by sony's install base, Nintendo is erroding their playerbase , what is that if not direct competition?

@Agramonte Haha, yeah, you're right, you'd think they'd understand the limits they're hitting. Well, sony doesn't have limits of more power right now as the leader, and they have a history of not thinking forward very much. As much grief as Nintendo gets they actually do think forward most of the time, they just don't always see the right ending in their crystal ball. Sony seems to go with "stick with it while it works and hope it always does" Not just Playstation but the whole company which is how they got themselves in a bad hole for a good while (TVs will never change! Minidisc WILL succeed!) And when reality catches up they throw more money at the problem. This time it actually worked for them. To be fair Kaz is a much better leader than they've had in a while and is helping fix some of those problems.

Microsoft...at this point they've got to see the limits of the strategy. They're in a weird place. They're really the one that brought the gaming industry where it is. They led that push to make it all about PC graphics and push the tech over the ecosystem. They own it. But it backfired. They launched it to take back DirectX market share in development after PS2 stole a lot and moved it to OpenGL. It worked for a while. But this time Sony took their strategy and applied their industry leverage to it, and stole MS's whole strategy as their own leaving MS scrambling. Partly from their own arrogance with the One launch. But right now, "more power" isn't going to dig them out of this hole. 1X is a nice box, but it's not going to reverse the trend. Where do they go next? I can't imagine they'd think out-powering Sony is the way to go. They don't expect 1X to outsell One after all. That's a dead-end zero-sum race. Yokoi knew that 20+ years ago. I still think, if XBox isn't just sold off, they'll take the Nintendo approach of innovative design (or just copy Nintendo with a premium sheen ) in the future. The Microsoft that brought the X-Box out was incapable of thinking of anything but beige box PCs and throwing more CPUs at a problem. Modern Microsoft is at least a known name in premium portable computing.

MS doesn't enjoy sinking money into XBox. On the contrary the investors loathe it, wanted it spun off, Ballmer protected it for unknown reasons, and Nadella pretty much planned to close it. It's lost them so much money. They did stay the execution of XBox for a while so long as One is "semi-ok" but it's still a black eye on the brand. It's popular in two specific regions, is irrelevant in most other regions, and is a punchline in Japan where even Internet Explorer had an anime mascot. They kind of have to ride out the One's lifespan to save face, but I don't know what happens next. I can't imagine them just putting an XBox Two X. Investors don't want to hear them repeating a failed strategy. So the two ways I see it going is post One they bail out of the industry and close or sell XBox (probably sell, it still has brand value), OR they just go Nintendo and seek innovation. Weird to say for MS....but I can see them doing that by "borrowing" the nod to portable and, just as they reframed console gaming as "the future of gaming is they're all PCs!", they could easily market the future of gaming as mobile with Surface (as though they were the first with the idea... ) XBox was about synergizing with Windows. One was SUPPOSED to be about synergizing with Azure. Maybe "Two" will be about synergizing with Surface. That would leave Sony their little empire, but ringed in from both sides by mobility, might be a shrinking empire.

Windows phone.....it's as though they didn't know that was a disaster before it launched! If not, they were the only ones. Of course they still get royalties for Android as well, so it's kind of win/win by out-competing themselves. They just use most of that Android money to plug the XBox debt hole....

"Sony would rather push VR — something that's completely unproven and still an infant/niche technology, at least in gaming — than to go back to handhelds and mobile solutions"

That's kind of Sony's M.O. isn't it? They often have some niche tech (Minidisc, DMD, Beta, Laserdisc) that they push ad infinitum because their hubris doesn't allow them to accept that the future tech they believed in isn't adopted. And they've NEVER done well in mobile, aside from Walkman. The phone craze, the tablet craze, the handhelds.....even the early MP3 player era (apparently Walkman has come back somewhat..) Sony versions have always been near the bottom of the heap in sales....even when they were good products. I can't blame them for avoiding that entire field which seems to be a toxic swamp for them for some reason

Surface....it's been fairly lucrative. A lot of it is premium high margin sales. One thing to keep in mind is they're using Surface to hide the horror of XBox performance. They've started lumping the sales together as "hardware".....but it's clear that XBox is the one dragging the appearance of Surface down so it can appear that "hardware" isn't a total loss. Surface is no iPad ($1200+ for a convertible tablet?) but it's something of a success seemingly. Which highlights how bad XBox must be. I wouldn't rule out the streaming service thinking though. That would be very Microsoft. Depends how much Phil wants to be booed off stage at E3. I'm sure Mattrick has a spare bunk in his attic.

Agreed on Nintendo. I don't think there was much overlap with "PC family" systems with the Wii branding and strategy, but actually with Switch I think there's significant overlap. PC gamers have often wanted portable solutions and have often not minded dropping to 640x480 and all effects off to try to get games running on clunky builds, laptops and such. It's a more experimental bunch. A portable will appeal there. Vita piqued the interest of a portion of Sony gamers....and then unpiqued them with a lack of games and expensive memory. They have to keep getting the messaging right, and getting the games flowing. These days, sadly, everyone is most interested in "group consensus" as to if a particular thing is acceptable for their identity. If Switch is "cool" and "everyone also has a Switch" it will overlap a lot. If Switch is "weak" it won't. So it'll fall to marketing and comments from "cool" people to make that reality. There's definitely demand for a "powerful TV box experience". The problem is I'm not sure there's demand for two. It's like Beta vs VHS, Blu-Ray vs. HDDVD, 8-track vs. audio cassette, DVD vs. Laserdisc. Windows vs. OS/2 (Apple's always been their own world.) It's becoming a format war. Both use BD, but there's two distinct platforms, one with green discs one with blue discs, and they have mostly the same media on the discs but with two different format differences and some media that comes only to one. I'm not sure there's ever been prolonged consumer interest in format wars. When the two formats stop differentiating themselves the popular one just wins by default and shifted support. At this point Sony seems to be the established TV console format. Nintendo seems to be established as the handheld (now hybrid) console format. XBox....chipping at Ninty is easier than chipping at Sony's position. They're lacking something to differentiate themselves from Sony other than "the better online service of the two." They need a market. The red ocean of Sony's TV box isn't lucrative for them. Going toe to toe with Nintendo franchises as a handheld hybrid would be silly. Sega had the whole "real arcade games at home" thing that worked for a while. But if PS5 vs XBox Two is the same as 4 vs One...I can't imagine that generation will finish with the two consoles it starts with unless Sony blunders launch (which is NEVER out of the question. All 3 have managed to blunder their easy launches.)

Hah, I'd love it if Switch became the A&AA experiment platform for the majors. 9/10 times I find the A&AA experiments are, by far, the best games. The AAA games focus so much on spectacle and production value, that if you're not a shallow minded gamer get very boring and thin very fast. Like blockbuster movies. Terminator was fun. By the time we get to Transformer, I don't actually want to watch another blockbuster, ever. Even if they're more blockbustery than ever before. They do well in the mass market, but I'll take something with a bit more meat and less spectacle any day. Less CGI, more crafty dialogue. Same in games. Less "wow" moments, more memorable moments. AA usually delivers that. AAA rarely does!

@NEStalgia lol, good read!. I 100% with you on Sony sticking with it regardless of logic - sometimes they even sink other products doing it (memory stick duo = camera, Vaio) Atrac/minidisc (their entire portable audio line)

The Microsoft of old would just also keep at it regardless. That is mostly driven by the fact that they really only need Windows and Office to make tons of money. That said, the apparent death of windows 10 mobile shows changing times.

I totally agree that AAA games can be shallow, they do serve a role (just like sometimes you want a big budget popcorn movie) I think Nintendo is also in a position Sony/Microsoft cant be. They can release a random old port for 60 dollars and people will buy 500k copies of it. Because they buy the system mostly because of Nintendo. Sony shares the PS4 market with people who buy it for SE, Atlus, EA, Capcom,2k... And so on. Every publisher gets a percentage of the PS4 base. Sony is just the person that build the hall for every one to find them.

I'd love to see a new Sony handheld, the Vita was a far superior device to the 3ds technically

@Zuljaras I've still not cleared my Vita backlog, I didn't have trouble finding stuff I liked, and most of it was free on plus. Overall I've probably finished more Vita games than 3ds games, so I wouldn't say the quality is vastly better on 3ds.

Haven't jumped on switch yet because there's only 3 games that interest me and that's over £100.

@Zuljaras The Vita hardware was certainly vastly superior to 3DS hardware, not just in performance but also inputs, ergonomics, and display quality (and battery life, until the New variants arrived). The only reason it wasn't better was because nobody really utilized it for the same great content they put on 3DS. Imagine what it would be like if Nintendo's handheld was the Vita instead of the 3DS? Nevermind....that would be Switch...and it's vastly superior.

@Agramonte I forgot about Memory Stick....what a mess that was! They've always operated as though they're a prestige lifestyle brand, believing themselves to have been what Apple actually is: A product people pay more for a proprietary version of a commodity product for the prestige associated with it. In Japan they actually were prestige for a while. But outside Japan the physical display of that hubris was the Sony Style stores where they set up Apple-like boutique stores so you can surround yourself in Sony. Problem is, who surrounds themselves in Sony for the image of it? Their view of themselves doesn't match everyone elses who sees them as "a big electronics maker" not "a lifestyle brand." Thus all these infamous decisions.

Windows 10 Mobile....that one's a lot like Sony thinking actually. Every single "mobile" windows has failed since the start. Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Windows 8 RT, Windows Phone, Windows 10 Phone. Windows and ARM have never mixed well. I'm not sure why they keep dumping resources in an area they clearly were never a player in. Like Silverlight, the "new" (Apple-like) Windows experience. As though they miss the fact that people buy Windows for it's universal backward compatibility. But at least Microsoft eventually goes in reverse and tries to paint over their colossal screwups. Win XP, Win XP compatibility mode, Win 8.1, The XBone relaunch. Sony just trucks on ahead right into the trashcan with whatever product line it is screaming "We're right and the world is wrong!"

You know, I think you're one of the very few people on this board who actually understand Nintendo's position and the reason they've created the market they have! In a way Nintendo has, but doesn't project the very thing Sony sees in the mirror but doesn't have: Nintendo's kind of got that prestige brand status. It may not actually be prestige in the mass market, but it has it's dedicated, isolated market that buys Nintendo because it's Nintendo without having to open it market up to the broader world more than it wants to.

@NEStalgia
Sorry for the late reply, been working 12 hour shift, always, about half of the 64 games published by Sony were physical and rest digital, can't be bothered making a list but i guess you know the games, having owned a vita. Your original comment didn't say anything about retail only but that's irrelevant, all publishers release digital games. Can't agree entirely with you that most of their games look like mobile versions, the likes of killzone, uncharted, freedom wars, Gravity Rush, soul sacrifice, unit 13, Tearaway, LBP plus others were built for vita, full on games. Yes have to agree their ps3 ports were downgraded obviously, the vita ain't ps3 but still they came like rachet&clank Qforce, Wipeout, ps altars battle royal, everybody golf, sly Cooper thief in time, plus others, yes they were compromised compared to ps3 versions but still playable, their ps2 remakes were a different pond of fish with mixed reception, jak&dexter was a tragedy. The indie games they published were a mixed bag, some of them absolute gems like Resogun, unfinished Swan, super stardust delta, flower plus others, some also crap imo. Wii U didn't have a problem with PS360 ports, it was on same level as them unlike vita with ps3 and switch with ps4 pro, xboxonex , due soon. Wii U would have struggled more with ps4 games than Vita having ps3 games, that's the consoles they were up against at the time, now switch is here to have a go at this gen, nintendo's 2nd attempt at this gen, it will have same problem with playing full blown ps4 games just like vita with ps3, the Switch games will all be compromised in some way like modes missing, lower framerate, lower resolution, inferior graphics and whatever else, this won't mean they won't be good or playable, they should be fine, but it's the ps3 vita scenario again, we are already seeing this with switch games already, like fifa having modes missing, doom will have less fps and a hit on graphics, plus no multiplayer unless you want dlc, you see what am getting at, let alone the tragedy that's NBA. I own a vita, Wii u and 3Ds, my biggest let down of the three was Wii u, for me it didn't just fail with sales but games aswell, vita failed with sales but a massive success for me personally because i mainly play Japanese games and sports games, don't really care much for Western game's so it wasn't much of a loss when they left vita scene, i do like to support indie games though, I don't buy many but now and then one or two catch my eye, i loved playing every minute of salt&Sanctuary, undertale, i hope both games make it to switch, they deserve a wider audience, like i said sorry for late reply, wasn't been ignorant

@eltomo hush, junior. These are grown folks talking here.

@Akropolon I think you are both wrong. Sony doesn't make money on console sales, so it doesn't matter if a consumer chooses between the two, or buys both.

The competition is in software sales. Now that Nintendo is pulling in some third parties, they are a threat to Sony financials. There aren't going to be many people that buy Wolfenstein twice. Most of the copies sold on Switch, will be pulling money out of Sony and Microsofts pockets.

@NEStalgia Um...Sony didn't give up on Vita after a few months, and the games came out from them...Little Big Planet, God Of War, Wipeout, Mod Nation Racers, Sly Cooper 4, Little Deviants, Reality Fighters, Uncharted, Jak And Daxter Collection, Disgaea and more came out throughout the 2 years of it's launch, with quite a few from 3rd parties. It was after a few years that everyone gave up on it, including most 3rd parties...just like what happened on the Wii U. The Wii U was, what I think, the same situation, but it was a console, and nintendo basically did give up on it, just threw out many quick and cheap games that didn't have as much depth and enjoyment as many of the past nintendo games...granted that a few were good, they were still not as good as their past consoles...plus, there were probably just as many Wii U retail games as there were with the Vita, and both systems were basically looked away from...which was a shame for both, because both are pretty good systems. And, to make them kind of similar, it was downloads that kept them alive throughout the years. I'm just glad the Switch is doing good, and as much as I loved the PSP over the DS, the Vita...granted that it was better graphics wise than the 3DS, just didn't have the quick fire games that portables should have...I don't want to play a handheld game that takes 30 minutes to go through before I can save, which is why I chose the 3DS over it...granted I don't own the VITA, 3DS or even the Wii U anymore. Other than that, both companies were in the wrong for what they did, and nintendo in the past always gave up on their systems a year before their next ones come out...and the 3DS isn't getting much support, or had much support throughout the past 2 years...if you look at how many were filling out for the DS and original Gameboys. It's kind of a shame, and I'd be glad to welcome a new Sony handheld...if they did it right this time, and not use the expensive memory cards, but for right now, the Switch is what I call the newest handheld, and it doesn't look like a cheap kids toy and I'm not embarrassed to take it out on the go, unlike the 3DS which kind of looked like a kids toy. SOOO...in my past comment, I wasn't putting down either company, and I'm not a fanboy of either company...I love them both, and if Sega was still around, I'd have all three of the companies consoles. Nintendo, however, I'm starting to outgrow, but I always love playing Mario, Pikmin, Zelda and more.

@jbopatrick Yeah, no, I don't agree with that point. Everyone knows the money is made off of software (except for Nintendo making money off of hardware too a lot of the time). The thing that's important though is the overlap in customers.

In the grander scheme of things there's a tiny amount of people with both a PS4/XB1 and a Switch. Of those people, an even smaller percentage will be interested in getting Skyrim/Doom/similar titles. And of that ridiculously tiny percentage, even less people will say "I'll take the Switch version over the PS4/XB1 version".

Because that's the thing: there's pretty much no one out there who's picking Switch versions of games over other versions. More importantly: of the people who'll buy Skyrim/Doom on the Switch, a lot of them would never have bothered with those titles if they hadn't come to the Switch; that means it's not a lost sale for Sony, just an extra sale for Bethesda.

If anything, it's indie titles that should worry a company like Sony, seeing how apparently the Switch is performing amazing on that front right now. But AAA games like these? Those are built with certain hardware and demographics in mind and Sony and Microsoft won't have to fear the Switch on that front at all.

It's the exact same thing that happened with the Wii. It was a resounding success, had some amazing hard- and software sales, but didn't hurt the PlayStation and Xbox business at all. There were hardly any AAA multiplatform titles and those always sold less on the Wii (with some rare exceptions like Just Dance).

I completely get Sony and so should you.

@EDF Haha, yeah, I was kind of just messing with you with the 64 games thing. I generally look at the retail titles when comparing systems. They all have digital games, and digital games are generally smaller games, so in the context of the library I generally compare the physical, aka, larger fare, available. I have nearly all the games you mentioned, and most of those were decent to good games. Vita LBP remains, IMO, the best LBP actually, and Gravity Rush was the high point of the whole system to me. Tearaway felt throwaway. A good game idea that felt incomplete, and made for the wrong machine. Wipeout was excellet, but that was a launch game. Actually several of these were launch (or launch window) titles. "2 months" was an exaggeration I suppose. I recall I had a lot to play on it for the first 6 months or so before it fell apart and 3DS (which I thought I'd abandon for Vita) returned to being the center of attention. Some of the good games like Sly 4 were released much later in the window, but they were islands in an ocean of nothing. When one came out I'd have to polish the dust off my Vita, literally, before playing.

Indie doesn't really factor in. Even Shield has indie games, but nobody would compare it as a "console" along with even Vita. Any open source hardware can load up on indie, that's not what these platforms are about. My view of Indie is much like yours...I don't buy too many, but occasionally one catches my attention.

When Vita released, I was dismally disappointed with Wii, but frustrated being TV bound with 360 (and PS3 was kind of meh at that point compared to 360...few exclusives, and the inferior port of multiplats....PS3 didn't start coming into its own until the swan song period, strangely.) 3DS was taking a lot of my gaming time....but the games were "small"...DS type games.....that sort of console-mobile bridge era. Vita promised to be what I hoped for...and it was for the first few months. But that first summer it just kind of ground to a trickle. It would get a boost now and again but not much. And then around that time WiiU was announced and Vita panicked and started moving to the "we're really a WiiU too!" mode with the whole PS4 remote thing. Sony thought WiiU would be Wii and made some hasty decisions. I still believe fear of WiiU being a real Wii sequel in market share is what really killed Vita. Vita AND 3DS were kind of slow that year. Then WiiU came out and I played it a TON that first 6 months with all the launch 3rd parties and such. And then it too evaporated like Vita. But something happened....they abandoned WiiU to pour effort into 3DS and 3DS started to become the "handheld console" that Vita promised to be.

And I think that's where my satisfaction with Nintendo with that era rises above my satisfaction with Sony. Sony had PS3 that had a ton of games, and Vita which they pulled the yoke back on, to launch PS4 which for the first year almost entirely had ports alone, and they abandoned vita just prior to that launch. Didn't even really mention Vita that whole year. Meanwhile Nintendo had a huge growing library of "full" feeling games (for the first time on a handheld) and those games (mostly) didn't duplicate the WiiU library at all. So I was getting HUGE games on WiiU and BIG games on 3DS at a rate I couldn't keep up with them all. Meanwhile I was getting HUGE games on PS3, repeats on PS4, and virtually nothing on Vita.

I realize that equation is a little different if you're into VERY Japanese games. But that places Vita as a niche system. I like some very Japanese games. P4 made the Vita worth buying for that alone. Tokyo Mirage ranks as one of my top 10 game experiences ever. But out of the list of games with multiple subtitles on Vita....not a single one is something I'd look twice at in a clearance bin. I'm not big on "very western gaming" but also not big on "very Japanese gaming".....Tokyo Mirage was fun because it never took itself seriously. It was in on the joke. Barry Goodman reminded us of that constantly. But I think a "really good" games crosses over and isn't strictly western or Japanese. It takes what's good in both designs. And technically a lot of those "very Japanese" games bombed in Japan as well. But for anyone in that niche, the Vita would appear to not only have more games, but lengthy ones so it would seem full. It's just not something that can appeal to a group outside that niche while a lot of the "very Japanese" things the 3DS had were still universal in appeal. People bash Treehouse for not localizing things, but sometimes I think they really do know what they're doing in terms of what is universal and what is niche even if on the surface the two may seem the same.

Switch of course seems to take everything good about WiiU, 3DS, and Vita, and put it all on a pocketable battery powered tablet. I love Nintendo's games but were the Switch a Sony product, I'd probably half abandon Nintendo....was prepared to with Vita.....and here we are

I can say without 3DS I would have been unhappy with WiiU (but less so than Wii). But without 3DS and WiiU I'd have been miserable with Vita. To me WiiU and 3DS were a single "platform" divided into two pieces. Though for the price of PS4 at launch, you could get the whole WiiDSU platform for less....so it's not an unfair comparison from a money perspective. The "Nintendo platform' of the WiiDSU era (again, buying both cost less than just PS4 at the start), had buckets of original retail games. PS4 certainly did/does. But Vita always felt like a separate entity from Playstation, one with a lower standard of games that tried to immitate the Playstation ones but never really compared.

Actually now that I really think about it, it was the buttons (my Vita fell off the table when setting up my Switch....it fell because Sony's ill designed charging dock weighs like 3oz and is topheavy from its own cable plus the Vita on it. It's fallen dozens of times. that time I just left down there in a pile of tangled cables.....covered in dust...and it hasn't been retrieved since...) But now that I think about it the controls are what annihilated it. Even more than memory. It promised to be a portable PS3, and even cut-down versions of PS3/PS4 games were fine. But it lacked the inputs to actually play any of those games. And the bizzarro rear touch pad couldn't fix that problem. If they'd just put all the needed buttons on it, I think it would have been seen differently in the market. I don't know why they didn't. "Size", but it already wasn't pocketable, especially in their official case, and they proudly said it was "portable" not "pocketable"....so Switch size isn't much different.

Then of course they got rid of the OLED screen which was just....tragic. I actually bought a spare OLED Vita at one point when they switched to the LCD one because it was so cool a system and the screen looked so good.......it's still in the box.

@JLPick Little Deviants.....sorry, that gagging sound is me. I'll always have a soft spot for it, horrible as it was....

Most of those games were the first 3 months. Others were staggered periodically over a few years. But there were no release seasons around it.

Considering the retail space, there was at worst, better management of brand for WiiU. I never felt it was abandoned. Slow. Drought ridden. But there was always something big and exciting in the pipeline. Vita never felt that way. There'd be nothing, or ok but nothing amazing games....and releases were an "oh by the way." WiiU got a number of "you can't miss this, every gamer has to play this" kind of games. XCX, Splatoon, Bayonetta, MK8, Smash, Wooly World, SMM, etc. There was at least one or two blockbusters a year. (Plus blockbusters on 3DS) to look forward to. PS4 had blockbusters galore, but Vita, while it had some fun games, were all missable. Nothing was a blockbuster short of P4G (which was a PS2 game.) FFX remaster of course. But all remakes, nothing unique. Right up to the end WiiU had TP:HD (no worse than FFXHD), Sticker Star (people give that game so much guff.....the battle system sucks by nature but the game itself was excellent) and of course BotW. Sure, that's a thin, sad, exclusive library. But compared to Vita it was gigantic.

It's funny how different perspectives differ. You say 3DS hasn't had much support. Most of the people on this site keep screaming "Enough with all this 3DS support, just kill it Nintendo, you're going to ruin Switch!" 3DS just got freaking Metroid and (in Japan) DQIX, and Ever Oasis. I'd argue before Splatoon 3DS had more blockbusters than Switch this year. But it's an unfair comparison. PS4 didn't replace Vita, it replaced PS3. Vita replaced PSP which was all but forgotten for years outside Japan at the time. Nintendo messed up by sacrificing WiiU to save 3DS. Sony didn't go sacrifice PS4 to save Vita. But they messed up by ignoring Vita as soon as they showed Watch_Dogs running on a Radeon Crossfi.....errrr....I mean PS4.

People always say 3DS looked like a kids toy. In Aqua blue, sure. Cosmo black never did. The XLs looked cheap though before the New...no question there.

As for outgrowing Nintendo, I don't think it's possible to outgrow fun, and for the most part It's hard to think of what other companies are selling as particularly more "adult oriented." Doom, Wolfenstein, Walking Dead, etc. etc. all seem particularly adolescent to me. Honestly as an adult I'd rather be associated with childish than adolescent.....it's more mature There's very little in the game industry that's genuinely mature.....Heavy Rain. Most of the real heavy theme stuff comes in the JRPGs like the cute-on-the-surface DQ that usually ends up going to some very dark and serious places. That said, I can't say gaming would be better if it had more genuinely serious content. Sometimes being a nickelodeon style fish kid worried about sneakers and waterpistols is the most mature thing you could do compared to the alternatives

Then explain why the (2/3)DS has done so well in the West (as well as in Japan). This smells suspiciously like sour grapes after Nintendo absolutely kicked Sony's butt in the lastest handheld generation.

@NEStalgia First of all...you mentioned so much that I grew up with too, which means that it's finally nice to see someone on here that's about my age (38). Thanks for that. Other than that, never said that I was fully getting out of nintendo...still love Mario, Kirby, Pikmin and the occasional Zelda, but other than that...and this just isn't coming from the nintendo perspective, but also Sony, Microsoft, Sega, Ubisoft and others...they're just repeating the same thing over again. Still never got into Splatoon or Arms...just not my cup of tea...and the Wii U I thought was just a horrible system...just that the games seemed very rushed and incomplete compared to the games released on their past consoles. Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival just seemed like it could have been a lot more, it was just raced out to keep the ones that bought the system, happy with some kind of game coming out for it. As I grew up in the Atari era, NES was awesome for it's time, with the Genesis being my next, then the N64 and Dreamcast, then the Gamecube (still my favorite nintendo system) and PS2, then the PS3 and Wii, then the PS4...got rid of the Wii U...and now including the Switch. Still have questions on the future of the Switch, but it's still too early for anyone to answer those. Other than that, when I was talking about growing up and getting out of the games, I just don't think nintendo makes the fun games that they once did anymore. My wife and I play the party titles, but it's the trivia and Mario Party styles that we like...and we haven't liked a Mario Party since part 8 on Wii...and we've been playing the PS4 to death with the puzzle game Gems Of War and some of the other games (Crash Trilogy, Stardew Valley, Uncharted's, Little Big Planet 3 and now Everybody's Golf). That is...until Mario (Sonic Adventure) Odyssey comes out...the reason for Sonic Adventure being in there, is that what it kind of reminds me of. Other than that, it's still nice to play a decent Mario Adventure, Link's newest adventure, the Pikmin and Kirby series, but some of the others, just don't seem to have the love that nintendo once put into their games...I'm just hoping that the Switch keeps up and nintendo supports the system...and hopefully nintendo doesn't make a 3DS successor...and they just keep the Switch as their console and handheld.

Translation: "We can't compete so we're gonna pretend we don't want in on the handheld or hybrid market despite attempting it twice."

And this is coming from a PSP owner!

@Akropolon Not sure what you are talking about. Hardly anyone will pick the Switch version? Wut? Everytime there is a rumor a new game may get a Switch port, all I see is comments from people saying they will hold out for the Switch version. Have you opened the comments section on IGN or Gematsu, when there is a Dragon Ball FighterZ or Monster Hunter article?

Not to mention games like Xenoverse have already proved you wrong. It has been out on every system and PC. Everyone already had a more powerful way to play it, but it is selling great on the Switch.

You honestly don't think there is a large number of people that are going to choose portability over 60fps? It's a topic that is already being debated and it seems about 50/50. Half of gamers want portability over graphics. That will eat sales.