The culture of portable gaming is unhealthy because of the huge popularity of mobile games,” said Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios.
As part of the EGX 2015 gaming event held recently in the UK, Yoshida was asked about the possibility of the PlayStation Vita 2. He did not give an unambiguous answer, noting that people today have mobile phones, which are so easy to play games with today, writes Eurogamer.
“I’m a big fan of the PlayStation Vita myself, we worked hard on creating the console. Games built on touch control are wonderful: there are a huge number of similar projects with excellent design. But the presence of sticks and buttons is a completely different matter. So I hope, like many of you, that the culture of portable gaming will continue to live, but the climate [for such gaming] is not favorable at the moment due to the prevailing dominance of mobile games,” Yoshida added.
The position of the SOE president caused a violent reaction from the gaming community. It was most fully reflected on the pages of Kotaku, which directly stated that the killer of the Vita was not a mobile, but Sony itself. And it’s hard not to agree with this, keeping, for example, in mind that by the end of the second quarter of 2015, the total shipments of Nintendo 3DS for the entire time of its existence amounted to more than 53 million. Recall that sales of the console began in 2011, when mobile gaming has already begun to develop actively. In other words, 3DS mobile did not interfere with development.
Among the fatal mistakes of Sony, which caused the death of the PlayStation Vita, Kotaku edition also calls:
- weak spinoffs to games from large platforms
- positioning the console as a portable accessory to the PS4 instead of positioning it as an ideal platform for indie and niche games
- lack of ports on Vita games with PS One and PS 2
- no mention of the console for two years by Sony itself as part of gaming events
- termination of the development of games for the console by Sony
Sources: eurogamer.net, kotaku.com
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