At EGX, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida have confirmed the rumours that PlayStation Vita is not getting a successor and this will probably be the last of handheld consoles you see from Sony.
During a Q&A session, Yoshida was quizzed about the development and plans of the portable console to which he responded, “People have mobile phones and it’s so easy to play games on smartphones.” He added, “And many games on smartphones are free, or free to start.”
He continued that he was a big fan of the console and enjoyed working with the team designing every aspect of the console. “Touchscreen games are fun and there are many games who have good design. But having sticks and buttons make things totally different,” he said. He hoped that the cultural of traditional portable gaming continues but said that the climate was not currently healthy due to the huge dominance of mobile gaming.
Yoshida is not wrong in saying that mobile gaming is huge and one of the fastest growing segments in the industry but failure of PlayStation Vita was due to mobile was not the case. One of the things that led to the disappointment was the lack of first party games on the portable device and the not enough marketing as Sony did for Sony PS3 and PS4 which have sold tens of millions of units.
Other company which has had its ups with the handheld company is Nintendo. Its handheld systems for years have been different and catered a diverse audience right from the Games & Watch to GameBoy to the last Nintendo 3Ds which was last released in four years ago. Since its release in 2011, 3DS has sold close to 50 million units to make it one of the best selling game devices among the different platforms. The number is nowhere close to what its predecessor Nintendo DS which had sold more than 150 million units over a decade.
But since then, Nintendo too has not announced a new console in the handheld segment and with the recent announcement of its deal with DeNA to make games for the smartphones, it seems that the company also for now want to gauge the reaction from the mobile audience and then start work on its next handheld console.