Sony has announced that they will be ending Playstation Vita production in 2019, after years of production. The company doesn’t have any intention of making a successor either, meaning that Sony will be ending its handheld market with the Vita rather than attempting to throw good money after bad.
The Playstation Vita was first released in 2011, as a successor to the Playstation Portable and as competition to Nintendo’s own Nintendo DS handheld consoles. The platform seemed to be a modest success as well, having a number of different smash hits on it across its history. It eventually got a micro-console equivalent, the Playstation TV, which could run Vita games.
These games include Persona 4 Golden, the updated re-release of the Playstation 2’s Persona 4 that launched Persona into the public eye and made the series the amazing success it is today, and Dragon’s Crown, which was popular enough on the Vita and Playstation 3 that it got a re-release on the Playstation 4. Freedom Wars, a multiplayer action RPG, also sold extremely well.
Another advantage to the Vita was its backwards compatibility capabilities, which allow gamers to buy and play vintage Playstation games like Xenogears, Front Mission, multiple Final Fantasy games, and more.
Previously, before the announcement that Playstation Vita production would be stopping in 2019, Playstation announced that the Playstation Vita would no longer be getting shipped outside of Japan, likely in reaction to declining sales abroad. Now it seems like even in Japan there’s no longer any real demand for the Vita.
So, if you still own a Playstation Vita by this point, you might be able to sell it for a good amount of money to a collector or something if you don’t want it anymore before Playstation Vita production truly is stopped. And otherwise, you can at least say goodbye to a platform that did its best even against the juggernaut of portable handheld consoles that is Nintendo.
