The PlayStation Vita (PS Vita) is a handheld game console created and sold by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 17, 2011, and later in other countries on February 22, 2012. Production of the console ended on March 1, 2019. The PS Vita replaced the PlayStation Portable (PSP) and is part of the PlayStation family of gaming devices. It was part of the eighth generation of video game consoles and competed with the Nintendo 3DS.
The original PS Vita model includes a 5-inch (130 mm) OLED touchscreen that can be touched and used for typing, a rear touchpad, two analog joysticks, and front and shoulder buttons. It supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. A different version of the console also included a 3G modem for internet access. The Vita uses a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU and a quad-core SGX543MP GPU. The PS Vita 2000 series, an updated version, was released between 2013 and 2014. It had the same features but was slightly smaller, had longer battery life, and used an LCD screen instead of OLED. In 2015, Sony released the PlayStation TV, a version of the Vita that connected to a television, but it was discontinued later that year.
The PS Vita was designed to combine the experience of high-budget video game consoles with the growing popularity of mobile gaming on smartphones and tablets. After its successful launch, sales of the console and its games slowed, which threatened its future. Sony worked to attract smaller game developers in the West and supported Japanese companies, which helped keep the platform active. This effort led to fewer variety in games but stronger support for Japanese role-playing games, visual novels, and Western indie games. Sales were moderate in Japan and a smaller but loyal group of users in the West. Sony has not shared exact sales numbers, but estimates suggest around 15 to 16 million units sold.
In its later years, Sony promoted the PS Vita’s ability to connect with other PlayStation products, such as playing PlayStation 4 games on the Vita through a feature called Remote Play, similar to the Wii U’s Off-TV Play. Sales dropped in 2017 after the Nintendo Switch was released and the Vita was completely discontinued in 2019. The console is considered a commercial failure and was sold far fewer times than the Nintendo 3DS. Sony did not release a direct replacement for the Vita, but in 2023, they introduced the PlayStation Portal, a remote play accessory for the PlayStation 5.
History
After Nintendo's Game Boy handheld consoles were very popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, and Sony had great success with its PlayStation and PlayStation 2 home consoles around the same time, Sony decided to enter the handheld market. In 2004, Sony released the PlayStation Portable (PSP) to compete with Nintendo's Nintendo DS as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles. At first, the PSP did not sell well worldwide, but it gained more popularity in Japan with the release of games in the Monster Hunter series. However, Monster Hunter was not as popular in Western countries, so the PSP did not perform as well there. Overall, the PSP had mixed results. It was considered a success because it was the only handheld platform that competed with Nintendo for market share, selling about 80 million units. This was close to the number of Game Boy Advance units sold during the sixth generation of consoles, but less than half the sales of Nintendo's DS, which sold over 150 million units by 2011.
Stories about a new version of the PSP began in 2009, when reports said Sony was working on a device using a powerful processor similar to the original Xbox. By mid-2010, more stories appeared about a "PSP 2." At the Tokyo Game Show, it was reported that Sony had shown the device to employees in a private meeting. Soon after, Sony sent development tools to game makers to help them create games for the new system. In November 2010, a Sony executive said he had seen the new device but could not share details. Reports also showed early designs of the device, which had a slide-screen similar to the PSP Go, two cameras, and a microphone. However, the design was changed later because of overheating problems.
In 2010, Sony did not officially confirm the new device but talked about future hardware. A Sony executive said his team, usually focused on software, would help with hardware development. In December 2010, Sony's CEO said the new device would use different controls, like buttons for traditional handheld users and touchscreens for smartphone users. The device was officially announced on January 27, 2011, at a press event in Japan. It was called "Next Generation Portable" (NGP) and aimed to have better graphics than the PSP but not as powerful as the PlayStation 3. Engineers said its power was between the PSP and PS3. The device would have a 5-inch touchscreen, a rear touchpad, and two analog sticks. Sony also planned to sell games through both physical copies and digital downloads. More details were shared at a game developers' conference, including the use of small game cartridges instead of the PSP's UMD discs, and features like cameras and motion tracking.
On June 6, 2011, at E3 2011, Sony announced the device's name would be the PlayStation Vita, with "vita" meaning "life" in Latin. Mark Cerny designed the device. Despite delays caused by Japan's 2011 earthquakes, Sony said it would release the Vita in Japan by late 2011 and other regions by February 2012. The Vita launched in Japan on December 17, 2011, and in the U.S. and Europe on February 22, 2012. A special version was released earlier in North America. The Vita launched with 26 games in Japan and 25 in other regions, including new titles and game ports.
The Vita sold well at first but then slowed down. In Japan, it sold over 300,000 units in its first week, but sales dropped sharply afterward. In the U.S., it sold 200,000 units in its first month, then dropped to about 50,000 a month. By February 2012, 1.2 million units had been sold worldwide. The Vita continued to get popular games, like Gravity Rush and Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, but sales remained low. After 10 months, only 4 million units were sold, and estimates suggested about 6 million units sold after two years. Sony stopped sharing direct sales numbers for the Vita and combined them with PSP sales. Sony had planned to sell 16 million units of the Vita and PSP combined but had to lower its goal twice, to 12 million and then 10 million units.
In 2012, big game companies like Ubisoft and Activision reduced support for the Vita, especially in Western countries. The Monster Hunter series, which helped the PSP sell well, was not released on the Vita, as Capcom chose to focus on Nintendo's 3DS. Sony's director of content then worked with smaller, independent game makers who had experience with mobile and PC games. This helped a little but did not fix the Vita's low sales.
Hardware
The PlayStation Vita was designed to combine features of traditional video game consoles with those of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. It has many ways for players to interact with games, including a large touchscreen, two analog sticks, a D-pad, standard PlayStation buttons, shoulder buttons, and a motion-sensing system called Sixaxis. The device also has a special touchpad on its back for additional control.
The Vita includes stereo speakers, a microphone, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, and two cameras. Each camera is 0.3 megapixels and can record video at 60 frames per second or take photos at 640×480 resolution. The cameras support features like face detection and head tracking. A version of the Vita with 3G mobile data support was available, but it required a separate data plan and was later discontinued in 2013.
Inside the Vita, there is a custom chip with a quad-core processor and a quad-core GPU. Sony limited the device’s performance to avoid overheating and battery issues, placing it between the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3 in power. The battery lasts 3–5 hours for gaming, depending on usage, and up to nine hours for music playback. The Vita has 512 MB of system RAM and 128 MB of VRAM, allowing cross-game chat.
Games for the Vita are stored on proprietary memory cards called "PlayStation Vita game cards," which are similar in size to SD cards but not compatible with standard memory cards. These cards come in sizes from 4 GB to 64 GB. Initially, the Vita could store up to 100 games or apps, but this limit was later increased to 500. Due to high prices, third-party adapters allowing the use of micro SD cards became available.
The Vita can play most PlayStation 4 games through Remote Play, using a PS4 and a Vita as a controller. It also supports streaming PlayStation 3 games via Sony’s PlayStation Now service, though this feature was discontinued in 2017.
A thinner and lighter version of the Vita, called the PS Vita Slim, was released in 2013. It replaced the OLED screen with an LCD display, added about an hour of battery life, and included a micro USB port. The Slim model came in six colors in Japan but only two in North America and Europe.
The PlayStation TV is a non-portable version of the Vita that connects to a television via HDMI. It uses DualShock 3 or 4 controllers but cannot play Vita games that require touchscreen, rear touchpad, microphone, or camera features. It shared Remote Play and PlayStation Now capabilities with the Vita but was discontinued in 2015 due to limited success.
Software
Physical software for the Vita is distributed on a special flash memory card called "PlayStation Vita game card." All Vita games can also be downloaded digitally through the PlayStation Network via the PlayStation Store, although not all games are released physically. Since its launch, digital-only releases have become more common. This is partly to lower production costs for the Vita's smaller user base and partly due to the popularity of smaller indie games that are only available digitally. Like the PS3 and PS4, the Vita supports Trophies for games.
The system was designed to allow developers to use assets from PS3 games to create Vita versions of those games. Before the Vita's release, third-party studios demonstrated the device by using assets from their PS3 games and displaying them on the Vita. Examples included Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Yakuza 4, and Lost Planet. While these high-budget tech demos did not become actual games, many Japanese studios later developed mid-level games for both the Vita and PS3, such as the first two games in Falcom's Trails of Cold Steel series, Hyperdimension Neptunia from Compile Hearts, and several games from Tecmo Koei's Atelier and Dynasty Warriors series. This trend continued on the PS4, with Vita/PS4 releases becoming common due to the size of their user bases—Vita versions for Japan and PS4 versions for North America and Europe. Few PlayStation 2 titles were ported to the Vita because of the PS2's complex design. Games that were ported, like Final Fantasy X/X2 Remaster and Persona 4 Golden, required major changes, or were based on PS3 versions, such as Jak and Daxter Collection, Ratchet and Clank Collection, and Sly Cooper Collection. Toward the end of its lifespan, Vita versions of games were increasingly canceled in favor of PS4 or Nintendo Switch releases.
The Vita is backward compatible with most PSP games, but its lack of a UMD disc drive limits this to games that were digitally released on the PlayStation Network via the PlayStation Store, not physical PSP games or films. It is also backward compatible with most PlayStation One Classics—PlayStation 1 games available for digital download—and PlayStation Minis, small-budget downloadable titles originally made for the PSP and PS3. Games from Sony's PlayStation Mobile initiative were initially compatible but were removed when the service ended in September 2015. In Japan, some downloadable PC Engine and PocketStation titles also became backward compatible.
Many applications are available on the Vita, some pre-loaded on the device and others downloadable through the PlayStation Store. Pre-loaded apps include a web browser, a "Content Manager" app for managing saved data, an email client, a music app, a photo app, and a video player. The web browser supports HTML5, cookies, and JavaScript but not Adobe Flash. It also included "Near," a social media/GPS-like app that showed nearby Vita users and their activity, though most features were disabled in 2015.
Other third-party apps, like those found on mobile devices, were also available on the Vita, including Crunchyroll, Facebook (removed in 2015), Flickr (broken), Google Maps (removed in 2015), Hulu, Live Tweet (a Sony Twitter client), MLB.tv (broken), Netflix, Redbox Instant (discontinued), Skype (removed in 2016), TuneIn (broken), Twitch, WeatherNation, and YouTube (removed in 2015). Facebook, Flickr, Google Maps, Twitter, and YouTube are no longer available as Vita apps but can still be used through the web browser.
Unlike the PSP and PlayStation 3, the Vita does not use the XrossMediaBar interface. Instead, it uses a touchscreen-based UI called LiveArea, which includes social networking features via the PlayStation Network. Each game or app is shown as a circle icon. Selecting an icon opens a panel with options such as running the software, visiting its website, checking for updates, or viewing a newsfeed-like list of activities related to the game or app, such as installing it or earning trophies.
Reception and sales
According to Metacritic, the original PlayStation Vita hardware received mostly positive reviews from critics when it was first released. However, some concerns were raised. Metacritic editor Jason Dietz noted that reviewers praised the Vita’s hardware design and operating system but worried about its usefulness in 2012 and later. Critics pointed out that the Vita had a large size and high price compared to mobile phones, which had large screens and inexpensive games available. When the Vita launched in Western markets in February 2012, 9 out of 44 professional reviews were rated "Great," 29 were "Good," 6 were "Mixed," and none were "Bad" or "Awful."
Initial sales were seen as positive. In Japan, the Vita sold over 300,000 units, and in North America, it sold more than 200,000 units. However, sales dropped sharply in both regions. In Japan, second-week sales fell by 78%, and weekly sales later averaged about 12,000 units. In North America, monthly sales after launch averaged between 30,000 and 50,000 units. Sony did not meet its goal of selling 10 million Vita units worldwide by the end of March 2013. By the end of February 2012, 1.2 million units had been sold. By the end of 2012, sales reached 4 million units, and by the end of 2013, analysts estimated sales had reached about 6 million units. Sony stopped sharing sales figures after reaching 4 million units in 2012.
Consumer opinions about the Vita declined in 2013 after early sales slowed. Surveys in Japan showed that people avoided buying the Vita because of its high price and limited software choices. Only 46% of Vita owners approved of the device and its software library. Western critics also believed low sales in 2013 would lead to the Vita’s early decline.
From 2013 onward, Sony changed its strategy to focus on niche markets instead of mass appeal. It emphasized small Western mobile games and mid-level Japanese games, and connected the Vita to the PlayStation 4 through remote play features. Sony also released an updated Vita model, the PCH-2000, which received praise for being smaller and less expensive. However, some critics were critical of the switch from OLED to LCD screens, which they said slightly reduced image quality.
Sony did not share specific numbers but said Vita sales in North America exceeded expectations in 2014, sometimes leading to stock shortages. Similar results were reported in the UK. In Japan, the Vita sold more units than the PlayStation 4 in 2015 and reached 5 million units sold by 2016, according to sales tracker Media Create. The Japanese release of Minecraft for the Vita also sold over a million copies that year. By 2015, research firm EEDAR estimated worldwide Vita sales to be about 10 million units. Despite fewer users, the Vita remained a viable platform for game releases through 2017 due to strong software sales per user. Indie developers and companies like Limited Run Games praised the Vita for its variety of original and niche games. By mid-2017, estimates suggested 15 million Vita units had been sold, and by September 2018, estimates reached about 16 million units.
In a 2021 review, The Verge reported that Sony employees believed the Vita’s poor sales compared to the PSP (which sold about 80 million units) were due to several factors. Similar issues were seen with Nintendo’s transition from the DS to the 3DS. Christian Phillips, a former Sony executive, said Sony underestimated the growth of mobile gaming when the Vita launched. Sony believed smartphones were only "good enough" for gameplay and thought tablets were its main competitors. However, mobile gaming expanded rapidly, drawing potential buyers away from the Vita.
John Koller, a former Sony marketing executive, said the Vita launched too late in the PlayStation console cycle and too close to the PlayStation 4’s release in 2013. Many of Sony’s first-party developers focused more on PlayStation 4 games than the Vita, which reduced interest from third-party developers. Koller believed that if the Vita had launched earlier during the PlayStation 3’s lifespan, it might have attracted more developers and built a stronger software library.
Legacy and impact
The Vita was considered a commercial failure for Sony. In 2018, Sony announced there would be no replacement for the Vita or PSP handheld devices. As the 2020s began, the success of the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck handhelds led some companies and media outlets to question Sony's decision to leave the market. In 2023, Sony introduced "Project Q," a controller with an 8-inch screen for the PlayStation 5 that would mimic the experience of remote play on a Vita or Off-TV Play on the Wii U GamePad. The product was later named PlayStation Portal and was released on November 15, 2023.