PlayStation Vita: Two Years Later

I’ve been to lots of E3s, but E3 2011 might be my most memorable for one reason: PlayStation Vita. It wasn’t the hardware or the games that blew me away – although both compelled me – but the reaction from gamers and the press alike. Folks well outside of the PlayStation ecosystem seemed staggered by Vita’s power and potential, and the price of PS Vita came in well below many industry experts’ predictions. There was palpable excitement about the device, not just from the hardcore PlayStation community, but from just about everyone else in the industry as well.

All of this, combined with what appeared to be a healthy launch slate – easily one of the strongest in the history of the medium – convinced me that PS Vita was going to be a hit. I even put bold predictions of Vita’s soon-to-be success in writing. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. While PlayStation Vita is an amazing piece of hardware with an incredibly underrated library of games, the fact remains that, two years on, Vita’s trajectory is currently one of ultimate commercial failure.

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