It’s always interesting to see what people will do when they think they have an item that can shake up the market. Sony is one such company, and for the record, they’ve hit a lot more than they’ve missed. They’ve helped revolutionize the console market, the TV market, and even the VR headset market. Yet, there is one glowing failure that many are happy to point out, the handheld market. In their time, Sony has released two handheld devices, the PSP and the PlayStation Vita, and neither took over the market like they promised.
For the PSP, it actually did rather well sales-wise. However, it was in the same generation as the Nintendo DS, which exploded in sales and sold well over 100 million units, whereas the PSP did barely half of that.
As for the PlayStation Vita, it was basically DOA. Even though the 3DS didn’t do the numbers the DS did, the Vita didn’t even come close to PSP numbers.
You’d think after this failure that Sony would be hesitant to continue on with this market. Yet, in an interview with Bloomberg (detailed by IGN), Sony CEO John Kodera noted this:
“In my opinion, rather than separating portable gaming from consoles, it’s necessary to continue thinking of it as one method to deliver more gaming experiences and exploring what our customers want from portable. We want to think about many options.”
In regards to those options, Kodera noted that Sony is “experimenting” with potential ideas for new handheld devices. So you can only imagine what they’re trying to come up with.
The ironic thing here is that were they to release a new handheld system soon, they wouldn’t have much competition. As Nintendo is focusing their efforts on the Nintendo Switch, which is a console/handheld hybrid. And there’s no clear ending for the 3DS in sight as of yet.
