Some devices stay in memory for their details, and the PS Vita was full of them. On March 1, 2019, Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Asia confirmed that production of the handheld had ended. The company had already warned this would happen “soon”, and now it was official: stores would not receive new stock and it would no longer be possible to order units from Sony.
The PS Vita launched in Japan on December 17, 2011 and in the rest of the world on February 22, 2012. The successor to the PSP, it wanted to combine the experience of a dedicated console with the trend of phones and tablets. A nice detail: the original model had a five-inch OLED touch screen, a rear touchpad and two analog sticks. A slimmer version swapped the OLED for a cheaper LCD screen and gained more battery.
Since launch, the Vita faced strong competition from the Nintendo 3DS and from phones, and could not attract publishers, who preferred to focus on those devices. Sony itself stopped producing games for it in 2015. In the final years, the company started highlighting Remote Play, which let you play PS4 titles on the handheld. Sony never released exact numbers, but estimates put it at 15 to 16 million units sold, well below the nearly 80 million of the PSP.
What came next
Sony did not release a direct successor, and the Vita remained the brand’s second and last true handheld. The closest device came in 2023: the PlayStation Portal, a Remote Play accessory for the PS5 that does not run games on its own.
Source: Eurogamer.
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