PlayStation Vita Successor Unlikely, Says Sony President
The PlayStation Vita may have followed the PSP, but Sony isn't planning on a successor to it due to the rise in mobile gaming.
Eurogamer reports that Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida revealed that his company isn't planning on doing a followup to the PlayStation Vita handheld. Yoshida notes that the boom in mobile gaming has dealt a massive blow to handhelds.
"People have mobile phones and it's so easy to play games on smartphones," Yoshida said. "And many games on smartphones are free, or free to start."
The PS Vita first launched throughout Japan in late 2011 and was the successor of 2004's PlayStation Portable (PSP). The PSP used Universal Media Discs, which Sony heavily tried to push in the mid-2000's by releasing full-length movies onto the format. Due to UMD films costing nearly twice as much as DVDs, Sony's venture into portable films flopped horribly. The PS Vita abandoned the UMD format and used a special type of flash memory card for its physical games, which were very similar to SD cards. Just as the Nintendo 3DS has yet to outsell its DS predecessor, the PS Vita's sales numbers are nowhere close to rivaling the PSP's.
"I myself am a huge fan of PlayStation Vita and we worked really hard on designing every aspect. Touch-based games are fun - there are many games with really good design. But having sticks and buttons make things totally different," Yoshida added. "So I hope, like many of you, that this culture of playing portable games continues but the climate is not healthy for now because of the huge dominance of mobile gaming."
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