Hoping for a Sony PlayStation Vita 2? Your luck is out, as one Sony exec pours cold water on the prospects of another handheld in the near future.
When the PS Vita launched back in Japan in 2011 (and 2012 for the rest of us), the hype was short-lived. Sales quickly stalled and big-budget game studios were soon put off developing content for the console.
But times have changed, and the success of the Nintendo Switch has shown there’s great promise for handhelds in the home. Unfortunately, Sony isn’t convinced a PS Vita 2 is the way to go.
In an interview with Time, Shawn Layden, who heads up Sony’s global game development, suggested that we wouldn’t see a PS Vita 2 any time soon, and that’s thanks to the lacklustre performance of the original PS Vita.
Despite launching to positive critical reception, sales fell short of targets, with the global total estimated at 10 million in 2015. Meanwhile, Nintendo expects to sell 10 million Nintendo Switch units in 2017 alone
Layden admitted that Sony still sees the Vita as a viable development platform, with games still being made for it in Japan. However, he confirmed that a Vita successor wasn’t on the table right now.
“To be honest, the Vita just didn’t reach critical mass in the US or Western Europe,” Layden told Time.
“I don’t know if it was that it was more technology people had to carry around, or more things to charge, or whether their phone or tablet were taking care of that,” he continued. "But once the content slowed in that pipeline, it became hard to keep the Vita as a going concern."
However, Layden was keen to sing the praises of handheld gaming, describing Nintendo’s portable Switch console a “great success for Nintendo”, and admitting that “it’s definitely what that fanbase has been waiting for”.
But he also revealed that Sony doesn’t necessarily see the Switch as a threat to the PlayStation 4: “When you look at our numbers, I think it shows that a lot of gamers are a two-console family. And quite often, those two consoles are PlayStation and Nintendo sitting side-by-side."
