What flaws did it have? 
the proprietary memory format was probably the biggest flaw. the memory cards were expensive and the 64gb one has an unreal failure rate.
technically the vita was impressive for the time but in the context of when it released, with mobile being in the ascendancy, it really suffered from not being powerful enough to run ports of ps3 games. it was in that weird spot where it took notable resources to develop for but not enough to make it viable for then current gen ports. that meant it got locked in that vicious cycle of big games not grabbing the mass market, not selling enough to make bespoke titles viable so sales numbers dropped and round we go.
i don’t know if there was a path to a handheld at the time that could run ps360 ports at lower resolution and fidelity at the time but that was the reality of the market on vita.
also not having a second set of shoulder buttons made straight ports of ps2 and smaller scale ps3 games harder. its not a critical flaw but enough that it made some games ergonomically challenging on the vita - especially considering the audience on the ps3.
sony has always felt like a company where the hardware and software divisions aren’t really joined up. i reckon that experience was what informed the design philosophy of the ps4 and why we’ve essentially had straight forward console designs from sony since.
it’s a shame because i think they did learn some lessons from the psp but not all the right ones. the psp nub was horrendous and the vita sticks are an improvement but still not great for fast paced shooters and action games. also when the psp came out there were far more gadgets using the memory card format, as well as a lack of real standard then. when the vita came out, the sd card format was pretty much the go to.
and yeah, sony made a handheld they ended up not wanting to support and that will always baffle me. say what you like about nintendo but they’ve made sure that their handhelds suit the scope of the games they want to make.
3 Likes
Now that you mention it, I definitely remember hearing a lot of this back in the day, especially the memory card debacle 
Sony definitely has an audience when it comes to their handhelds and they’ve absolutely got the library to back it up. If they weren’t so gung-ho about cloud gaming via Portal, a handheld PS3 loaded with ports of PS4 games and a backlog of PS1, PS2, PSP, and Vita games would be pretty easy money for them, considering the handheld market in Japan is still huge.
sadly i think that ship’s sailed. the switch and switch 2 have covered both the handheld market and the low end of the industry (in terms of scope and fidelity). i know sony are meant to be working on a handheld ps6 but fact is if you’re a dev without huge resources, your best bet is to target the switch and ps4, then move onto the switch 2 and ps5.
also sony don’t look like they’ve got any interest in backwards compatibility. all the old games they’ve brought forward are either emulated or remastered. even the exclusives that do get ported (like patapon) are coming to switch anyway.
don’t get me wrong, competition is always good but sony have never shown any interest in splitting their focus. the psp and vita were home to their ‘b-tier’ devs, for lack of a better description. now all of them are pretty much working on their own console games or supporting other studios.
nintendo on the other hand don’t work like that, so its more viable for them to put out those smaller budgeted titles. it’s a shame because i’ll always have a fondness for the market when there were loads of competitors and the barrier of entry wasn’t so high. even if it was maddening trying to play all the exclusives back then.
1 Like
This for sure. I miss the dedicated handhelds of yesteryears and the quirky features that came with them - like NGPC and the horoscopes and stuff.
I miss those days, but at the same time I’m glad that all resources are being routed in one direction and games are (for the most part) getting bigger and better.
Back in the day when TVs didn’t have that “turn on when the console turns on“ functionality, it was so convenient to pick up the Wii U Gamepad and use that TV button to turn on my TV and switch inputs. I loved that feature.
2 Likes
No joke, we use the TV remote functions on our Wii-U pretty often 
we lost the remote that came with our living room TV, and Roku remotes don’t have that button. So if we need to change to composite or another HDMI, we snag the game pad and get right to it.
Seriously - Wii-U doesn’t deserve a lot of the hate it gets.
2 Likes
very few consoles deserve actual hate, tbh. off the top of my head the only ones i can think of that are either bad or a horrible waste are the atari jaguar, amiga cd 32, 32x, virtual boy and the original xbox one.
the first two were just badly designed machines releasing for markets that stopped existing before they launched, the 32x was the result of an industry turf war between sega of japan and sega of america, while the original xbox one was the frankenstein of all the different corporate arms of microsoft trying to shoehorn their interests into one machine. the virtual boy is possibly the outlier in a legitimately awful product that never should’ve left the r&d dept.
even then i’d probably caveat that each of them only really suck in terms of their specific context.
it’s darkly funny that a lot of ‘failed’ consoles end up becoming sought after and fondly remembered once enough time passed.
1 Like
Holy shit yeah. Amiga CD-32 and Jaguar CD, as far as I’m aware, have no redeeming qualities in sight. 32X was a good idea on paper, but executed in the poorest possible way, same with Virtual Boy.
The Amiga CD-32 can absolutely get fucked
“original xbox one” is such a cursed phrase
3 Likes
whatever the equivalent of retro youtube will be in 30 years is gonna be fun for those poor sods to parse all this
1 Like
I think it’s cool the Casio Loopy can print stickers, I’ve seen several videos about it, but nobody printing the stickers?
1 Like
James has
3 Likes
LMAO “Xbox Series X Retrospective at 3am (not clickbait)”
I don’t like seeing old consoles dismantled… specially rare ones…
T^T
1 Like
He always takes apart whatever he’s looking at in his videos, that’s par for the course. If you want to see true horror, though, watch James Channel’s first video:
His hacks are real messed up but he’s a die hard serious collector and treats the rare stuff very carefully
1 Like
I think I’ll faint if I watch this video… T^T
Really surprised no one said “The Dreamcast VMU”. So many things about the Dreamcast felt like the future to me and it’s so wild that they just shot the whole console behind a shed.
2 Likes