The #PlayStationVita launched in 2011 and almost immediately failed. Despite incredibly low sales, the stylish handheld has an extremely good reputation over a decade later. If no few people supported the console, what's behind the respect?

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Notes

- All prices are in USD, based on sales data from launch.
- PS Vita sales figures are fuzzy at best. Sony stopped reporting exact sales data after their 2014 financial report. 2012 - 2014 financial data also only reports combined sales for PS Vita, PSP, and PlayStation TV. Sales units shown in the video should be understood as the upper limit for sales in those time periods.
- While official support has ended, third-party games are still being released for the Vita, with homebrew being the most active scene.

Extra Links

For anyone interested in reading more on the Vita's history and reception, check out the links below. I've included a bunch of retrospectives that helped fuel this video as well as that extremely negative PC Mag article.

- PC Mag (Stop the Revisionist History): https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/stop-t...
- The Verge (Impact of the Vita): https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22...
- IGN (How the Vita pivoted to Indie games): https://www.ign.com/articles/the-play...
- Gamespot (#VitaIsland):    • PlayStation Vita 10 Years Later  

Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:52 The Vita's Launch
04:15 Lagging Sales
05:36 Pricing Pitfalls
08:28 Where were the games?
10:30 Success via Hindsight
11:44 Here are the games!
13:05 The Modding Scene
14:26 Where does that leave us?
15:46 Outro