Players vented their frustration on forums like Reddit and Twitter. IGN's original story on the closure attracted more than a thousand comments. Have you played Don't Starve? Generally, PlayStation's tweets garner a few hundred retweets. The re-opening announcement RT-count is more than 25, The Vita storefront remains open, and new games are still planned for release. Industry sources confirmed that the negative fan response took Sony by surprise.
It was no easy decision to keep the stores open despite the outcry. The sources estimate that the storefronts probably cost a few hundred thousand dollars a year to run. There are also supplementary costs to do with maintaining old retail infrastructure that is not as secure as the newer digital stores. Sony has good reason to be afraid of hacks , and this was a key reason for the original attempt to close the store.
The people still working directly on Vita at Sony always understood that there would be a big backlash, according to sources. Some of those who suspected it might be an issue warned senior management prior to the closure, but were reportedly ignored. As those who waved away the warnings quickly learned, Vita fandom is still a force to be reckoned with.
Partly, this passion is Sony's own doing. Although the Vita was a commercial disappointment for Sony - and the company definitely made a lot of mistakes throughout its lifetime - it remains a beautifully designed machine.
A lack of big first party, and triple-A games hampered the Vita, but the company's attempts to bring cool, smaller games to the handheld were nothing short of heroic, and certainly lengthened the life of the Vita. All of these lessons were watched and learned by Sony's great gaming rival Nintendo, so when that company launched the Nintendo Switch in , it took the Vita team's indie playbook, and created a diverse library of games as a core of the platform.
Vita may be Sony's greatest failure in gaming, but it's created an aura and a legacy that's impressive in its own right. It'll go to the Vita super fans. That community is pretty fantastic and that's important to me, as well as having a version of the game on my Vita that I can play. These days, super fans like the ones Sternberg mentioned make use of the Twitter hashtag vitaisland to share news and opinions, in the absence of mainstream coverage.
The hashtag's name is a self-deprecating nod to the handheld's separation from the gaming mainstream, and also its enduring importance to community members. He too is relieved that the Vita store is staying open, citing game preservation as an important issue, and argues that it has a great deal of nostalgic relevance. Sony has changed since Vita launched, they don't have these big personalities up front, who would make us feel like the company isn't some faceless monolith.
Vita is this time capsule to an idea of PlayStation that doesn't exist anymore, but people still feel attached to. That attachment continues to draw developers to the platform. Lillymo Games released retro space shooter Habroxia 2 in February. Trophy tracking websites tell us that thousands more players have played the games on Vita digitally as well.
For a small team like us those thousands of additional sales of each game make a big difference. Johnson says he's working with Sony with a view to releasing another title for Vita, a non-violent arcade game called Forest Guardian. To understand why Vita attracted such a die-hard fan base - without AAA support - let's go back and look at the history. Following the moderate success of 's handheld PlayStation Portable PSP , and Nintendo's major success with its Nintendo DS, Sony wanted to make a mark in the handheld space with the most impressively specced machine on the market.
Reviews at the time were positive. IGN called it "easily the most versatile handheld available," adding that it was "an amazing piece of hardware with an impressive launch lineup and software that hints toward a bright future.
The comments turned out to be prescient. High prices resulted in slow sales. According to Sony's financial reports , Vita sold 1. In the corresponding period only a year earlier, the aging - but cheaper - PSP had sold 1. Sony downgraded sales forecasts and turned its attention to the forthcoming PlayStation 4.
Media Molecule's highly-regarded Tearaway was the last original game made specifically for Vita by a Sony-owned studio, although ports of games like MLB and God of War continued to be released, mainly as downloads-only. By , Sony senior vice president Masayasu Ito was openly directing first-party studios to ditch Vita and focus on PlayStation 4.
Consumer Electronics Global unit sales of Nintendo Switch console Lionel Sujay Vailshery. Research expert covering the consumer electronics industry.
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Corporate solution including all features. It's something Sony executives will be able to point to on-stage at E3 with an air of nostalgia, saying, "10 years ago, we pushed the limits of portable gaming with the Vita," or some other slightly revisionist spin, and it'll go over well.
But, just ahead of E3 , the Vita is getting little buzz and even less love from Sony. When looking at the raw data, it's easy to see why.
Units sold: 16 million. Top-selling game: Minecraft 2. Units sold: Top-selling game: New Super Mario Bros Top-selling game: Tetris 35 million. Units sold: 80 million. Top-selling game: Mario Kart 7 Sign up.
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