2011
LAUNCHED
OFFICIALLY LICENSED
1732 GAMES
16 MILLION
UNITS SOLD WORLDWIDE
"VITA MEANS LIFE"
-Kaz Hirai
PlayStation Vita
2011
Games
Launch & Origins
The PlayStation Vita launched as the successor to the PlayStation Portable in Japan on December 17, 2011. The PS Vita boasted a gorgeous OLED display with dual analog sticks, front and rear cameras, front and rear touch pads with the inclusion of 3G/Wifi and Bluetooth connectivity, making it truly an advanced device even for modern standards.
Upon its release, Vita sales were high in volume both in Japan and in North America. The Vita's future was promising as people saw all the potential and already the wide array of titles that were promised from its launch and early months. The Vita even received it's own exclusive Uncharted, Call of Duty, and Killzone games which were some of the most successful franchises on the PlayStation at that time!
As sales cooled more people became aware of the Vita's "Achilles Heel" which was the fact that the original Vita models (1000 series) did not have any internal memory and therefore people were forced to buy Sony's proprietary memory cards which came in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, 32 GB and 64 GB. These memory cards would not be cheap at the time and that was one the main factors that drove potential buyers away.
PS Remote Play
As third party AAA support started to fade for the Vita, Sony decided to change its marketing strategy for the Vita and decided to keep the Vita relevant through the use of PlayStation Remote Play far onto the PS4s life cycle.
The PlayStation Vita offered a wide selection of game genres, it's game lineup for the initial years consisted largely of games from AAA studios but as time progressed the Vita became a prominent platform for indie games and indie developers.
The Vita has become popular for it's exclusive games such as Uncharted Golden Abyss, Killzone Mercenary, Wipeout 2048, Gravity Rush, Freedom Wars, Soul Sacrifice, LittleBigPlanet Vita that have become fan favorites and are some of the best selling titles on the PS VIta.
Limited Run Games is known for having prolonged the life of the PS Vita with over 48 physical releases way into the Vitas final years of production at a point in which almost no new physical games had been released outside of Limited Run Games's drops.
PlayStation TV
A few weeks prior to the Vita turning two, on November 14, 2013 the PlayStation TV or PSTV was released in Japan. It featured the Vita hardware inside a compact metal case with a rear i/o. The PSTV let you play on the TV via HDMI using a DualShock 3 and even featured an Ethernet port plus an USB port.
The PSTV was ultimately supposed to be the superior device when compared to the Vita due to the fact that it could be played on the big screen and with your PS3 controller but this alone did not help the fact that many of the Vita's beloved titles were not in the "whitelist" of games that were actually compatible with the PSTV therefore not allowing for the PSTV to ever kick off successfully.
Check out our curated list of our top games on the PlayStation.
TOP GAMES
