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Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

Sony made several portable gaming devices (PSP, PS vita, PSN compatible phone).

The market didn’t really care for them.

Which makes sense. People already have a phone, they don’t want an additional thing to carry around. People want a flagship phone, not a worse phone that’s more expensive because it can play some exclusive games.

The Nintendo switch was the right form factor, but only Nintendo has the IP to pull it off. If MS or Sony were to make a Switch-like, it’d fail much like the nvidia shield has.

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> Sony made several portable gaming devices... The market didn’t really care for them.

Except for the PSP, which sold 81 million units.

Yes, you picked the one that did well, which also happens to be the one that sold before ubiquitous smartphones were a thing. I wonder if there’s a relationship.

Still have mine for LocoRoco and FF Tactics.

I immediately sold my DS to fund getting a PSP as it actually had decent games I wanted to play with much better graphics. Now that I have a job, I'd love to buy a Switch, but again...not very many games that are really appealing as I haven't been big into Pokemon and games in that arena since Red came out. I think Doom and Diablo III and Skyrim are good to see, but I'd need to see more in that arena.

Some Indie games are just great on it too. I played through Hollow Knight, Blasphemous and Dead Cells far more than I would have done if I got them on PC or PS4. They were fairly cheap too.

The PSP did fairly well.

The Vita on the other hand, I maintain it was the high cost of the proprietary memory cards (combined with the high price tag of $250 for the console upon launch) that sealed its fate. They should have been giving those memory cards away for free (or used SD) because the online shop would have blown up. Instead they pigeonholed themselves by using more Sony proprietary cards and no one could afford the thing _on top of_ a cell phone.

The Vita has excellent games and it's my second biggest collection, behind the Switch.

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