PlayStation Vita Review

Nothing about the Vita's hardware was wrong. The five inch OLED was gorgeous, the twin sticks made it the first handheld that could host a proper third person game, and it was faster than anything portable for years afterward. Sony then made every commercial decision badly. The memory cards were proprietary and priced like jewellery, the launch lineup leaned on ports, and once the PlayStation 4 arrived the company's own studios stopped making games for it and reframed the machine as a remote play accessory.

What kept it alive was everyone else: Japanese role playing and visual novel developers treated it as a home, and a wave of independent games from Spelunky to Hotline Miami played better on it than anywhere. Owners loved it in a way that owners of successful consoles rarely bother to. It deserved a publisher who believed in it.