As we’ve speculated for some time now the PS Vita may be on its way out. More evidence that the end may be near for the PlayStation brand’s smallest sibling comes from this weekend’s EGX, where the head of Sony’s Worldwide Studios snubbed plans for any further handheld consoles.
Also See: Sony PS Vita Unboxing and Review Video
He reveals the reason for pulling the plug on portable to be the “huge dominance of mobile gaming”. With such a flourishing free-to-play app game market for touch-screen platforms such as Android and iOS, releasing another handheld console at this point in time is understandably not the sensible option financially. Yoshida also added that he hopes that portable gaming with ‘sticks and buttons’ continues but as for Sony it look like it’s off the cards.
Despite getting a second lease on life by joining the PlayStation eco-system as a second screen for PS4, the future of the PS Vita has looked questionable for a while now for a few notable reasons. Since the start of the year there have been significant cost cuts to the price of owning the portable, including a deal spotted at some Tesco stores back in February which brought the PS Vita down to less than fifty quid. Support for a number of key apps has also been dropped in recent months including YouTube, Maps and Facebook. Putting it all together, this gave us the distinct impression that Sony was gradually letting go of the PS Vita.
Also See: Sony Set to ‘Terminate’ Facebook Support on PS3 and PS Vita
With Sony already a main player in mobile manufacturing, and with the app game market now the place to be for portable play, perhaps we could see the company revive the long lost “Playstation Phone”- the Xperia Play? Or not. Probably not..
From the Vault: O2 Delay Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Launch Due to Software Problems (March 2011)