It’s (almost) official: The PS Vita is dead
I read a few days ago on hackinformer that Target are liquidating their stock of PS Vitas, which initially didn’t feel like a big deal to me. But as I realized that black Friday is this week, this piece of news took a very different spin for me: retailers are getting rid of the PS Vita ahead of the biggest sales event of the year.
PS Vita is Dead: device nowhere to be found on retailers ads for black Friday
In other words, their are clearing their shelves of the laggards, in favor of much more attracting products. Yup, even at heavily discounted prices, major retailers don’t want the vita to pollute the rest of their videogame section on black Friday. A pretty heavy statement ahead of the biggest electronics sales week in the US.
Digging into the black Friday ads, it became clearer: the PS Vita is nowhere to be seen this year on major retailers’ catalogs. The statement is true for both games and systems. Of course, the living room devices (PS4, Xbox One, and PC) always see the bulk of advertising as opposed to handheld consoles, but the 3DS still gets its share of deals this year: Nintendo introduced a “black Friday” model that will sell for $99, not to mention the already announced deals on games such as Bravely Second or games in the Pokémon franchise.
Conversely, I have not found a single PS Vita deal, in any of the black Friday deals I have received.
Of course, all retailers in particular online giant Amazon will have flash deals, and I’m sure those will include PS Vita games. But this confirms that Sony have not been pushing the PS Vita at all this year to retailers, an indirect statement that the console is pretty much dead from their perspective.
For the homebrew community, this is arguably good news: this means that the fight against firmware updates might come to and end soon (although, let’s remember that the PSP got its last firmware update years after Sony had dropped support for the device), and more generally that the incentive to update to the latest firmware is greatly diminished, convincing more of the community to stay on firmware 3.60.
For those of you who do not have the golden 3.60 firmware or do not have a PS Vita yet, this means PS Vitas might get easy to find for cheap this year if more retailers get rid of their stock. A good opportunity to get yourself a 3.60 PS vita and enjoy homebrews.
Fist!!!!
Why is “Target” significant? Do you think everyone lives in the US? The rest of the world doesn’t shop at Target.
It is a major retailer in the main market for video games. So it is statistically significant. As I said in the article, it’s also clear that no other retailer is doing anything for the console in the US this year after a check. The US represent 50% of the market. But please, enlighten me about how wonderfully the console is doing in Japan.
you always reply to those ‘filled with hate and jealousy’ comments made by some random *** guy……ignore them man…..or even ban them from your website
Yeah, you tell em, Wolo. Beat that ***!
Is the market in Europe so insignificant? Your comment sounded like its 50/50 US & Jap, but whats up with the rest of the world?
In Europe it doesn’t seem to be doing well. In Slovakia it’s not shown on any of the mayor conventions, even though other products, such as PS4/Xbox or even 3DS are shown tho later less. It’s hilarious than on several animeshows, ps vita stand was present in sony booth with no ps vita attached to it. In shops it’s not getting much space and minimal to none in most of non gaming ones. I was in Wienna tho recently and there was a solid section of Vita games in a tech store i went to, but not anything to brag about.
In Japan Vita’s performing poorly compared to PSP. Compared to PSV world sales it performs good, but still nothing remarkable.
target isnt US-only
yeah its stupid article. its funny to think only US is the target. the world is bigger than u think.
yeah well in our country the supply of PS VITA is still abundant, and the price is still not going down, though i’m not sure if they will restock after every vita has been bought.
“All hail USA’s supremacy, only them exists in a world that have 7 continents”…
It’s amazing that no matter how the article is phrased it comes back to this type of statement. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but “Black Friday” is a US only event that happens after the US only event called Thanksgiving Day. Why would we even care about the rest of the world when we are talking about the Black Friday sales being an indication that the Vita may be nearing it’s end that are happening only in the US?
I think there’s a much better way to word that. Here in Canada, we have both Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day events, albeit that Thanksgiving is on a different day than the US. Black Friday is still a thing here however.
This is not surprising. It seems that the Wii U is dead as well. I haven’t found any discount on any retailer.
In fact, its factory has officially ended producing them, most probably to focus exclusively on the Switch (and probably the 3DS).
good to know i own 2 ”dead” consoles 🙂
If the day comes where Sony completely drops support for the Vita, does that mean that Apps like Netflix and Hulu will no longer be supported as well?
Depends if they are actually getting any support. If not then they will eventually end like Youtube app, without discontinuation or not.
Why is “Target” even relevant? Not everyone lives in the US.
PS: First time I visited today, trying to post the above and got “Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!”. Did I? Did I really already say that?? When? WHEN did I say that? I have never mentioned “Target” on this (or any other) website before.
I see the initial comment was posted after all… even though it wasn’t there when I refreshed the page. Never mind.
Yeah, sorry about that, heavy caching on the site is a bit tricky 🙁
LOL!! You say it’s the first time you visted but apparently that is a lie (you admitted this yourself). You posted 9 minutes earlier than this comment was made and you dare say you never mentioned target on this website.
Do you even know how the market works? Most consoles are sold in the US and Japan. Where are you even from anyway?
But Black Friday is a US event right. Which is what the article is about. Why would they mention a *** european retailer about a *** US shopping holiday. Get real
You said this BS last year as well and I’m pretty sure you said it the year before that too. This is gonna end up as a boy who cried wold scenario isn’t it?
wolf*
But it’s always for a different reason 🙂 I’d say it was in a coma until now and Sony are pulling the plug
Sony has been pulling the plug for years now, so this is not news at all. Please, stop with the drama.
It’s no secret that Sony has pulled the plug years ago in the Western market. Please, stop with the drama.
Boy who cried Wololo
Sony killed support for the Vita on their side after year 3. Then it mainly stayed on life support for 1 year and then 1 more year after that due to Japan support.
So, stuff your BS. The vita is dead and has been dead compared to how all other platforms are normally supported. Sony barely supported the Vita and barely put any effort into it. If you think otherwise, you’re kidding only yourself.
vita ns no where near dead, it have new games announced every week from third party developers.
It is official, Vita hes never been more alive. All it needed is Molecule and Adrenaline 🙂
The PS Vita is dead, long live the PS Vita! (Homebrew-wise 😉
I was just my local supermarket and went to the video game department, as I always do, and they didn’t have a single thing there that had to do wit the Vita. No games, systems or memory cards. I figured the end was nigh, not just that soon.
What is it like to be a local supermarket?
Hahaha, feels big. But not a big fan of having so many people in me, but what can ya do?
wow I even saw PS3s and XBOX 360s in the Gamestop catalog whoa this really means that the vita is dead
Well, Xbox 360 is dead aswell, Microsoft have stopped producing them in April 2016:
http://news.xbox.com/2016/04/20/xbox-360-celebrating-10-years/
I don’t know if Sony still produces PS3s, atleast in New Zealand they stopped shipping new consoles to sellers in October 2015.
It’s been dead in the US from day one. the console was never meant to be like the home consoles. It’s not designed to play Soccer, Racing and FPS games that for some totally confusing reason is all the *** US market wants while the rest of the world wants puzzle, RPG, strategy games and more. Since all the game distributors are based in the US they look at US sales first before deciding what they send to the rest of the world. It’s actually really annoying. We want this console. It’s a great console but were limited to what the *** US market wants and it’s not right. If you lot want to go around with your FPSs thinking they’re the best games then that’s up to you, It shouldn’t effect everyone else.
The amount of Japanese games that I want to get but I can’t because the US release bombed is really high.
its already dead, in europe
It’s more alive over here than in the US, actually.
how would you know? anyway it is not being sold anymore.
Europe isn’t really something you could consider a country
In part of Europe where I live it’s pretty much dead except few holdouts. In some cases PSP classics have bigger representation than PS vita games/vouchers and this happened in store dedicated to PC/Console games.
Just bought 4 games for it , all imported though 😉
Sorry It Died When it got it’s first “Stability Update”. Sony never really put the Full resources into the PSvita/PSTV to push and getting good 2nd and 3rd party Dev teams to make games. Charging for a different dev licence for PSvita and PSTV was very stupid. Sony will never get it.
So THAT’S why so many games are not PSTV compatible even though they don’t rely on touch… I assumed it was because studios didn’t find it worth the investment to do testing on PSTV, but if they are separately licenses altogether that makes a lot more sense.
Actually, they did, if you bothered to look. Note that, even fi you hate the titles, they’re still titles. heck, the even tried and (failed big time) with homebrew/indie devs (heck, no one remembers that other hack a year or so ago?). They tried, they did.
No point comparing them to Nintendo when a majority of Nintendo’s popular games are mostly first party along with that huge seller Pokémon (GameFreak). Then mobile games.
I think, the better question, is, what were they aiming for? What segment? Hardcore gamers? On the bus/train? No, they aimed wrong and tried to take on mobile gaming (fail) and Nintendo’s IPs and Pokémon (seriously, can anything be a bigger seller for a handheld?).
For me the PS Vita is very much alive with Henkaku and Homebrews.Sony’s business with PS Vita is Dead.With Homebrew community PS Vita is resurrected like a Phoenix coming out of its ashes.
but sony is the one that has a license to release a game at PS Vita the only thing why PSV is so active bcuz of the VPK dump and Mai Dump but if your talking PSP adrenaline its just a revival nothing news at PSP anymore
I don’t know why people are not satisfied with PS Vita, considering the list :
1) PS one games
2) PSP games
3) PSP minis
4) PS mobile games
5) PS vita games
6) Remote play
7) A good hardware to emulate consoles from (Nes to Dreamcast) and a single hardware with two sticks have advantage over many mobile hardware.
THEY CANNOT DO THAT “VITA MEANS LIFE” Sony stupid promises
Well, I suppose it’s up to hackers to perform their necromantic rituals to make it desirable again.
This is not surprising. Last time I saw a ps vita in Mexico (God of War bundle) was January this year and haven’t seen them since then. You can get them in paw shops though.
you forgot to add “… in the US” to the title. Widely available here in Japan.
Dang, I cried!
why do a lot of people here have to be so hostile??
It’s not dead in Japan….
but we all knew it’s ‘kinda’ dead in the game industry…
new games announced every week for the vita
Officially its almost dead. Unofficially thanks to taiHENkaku its got some good years in it yet 🙂
Jesus christ you guys are *** ***, these comments are terrible
“But what about the rest of the world…”
Missing the big picture
Wish I could get an OLED Vita for $60… Not sure it’s worth getting a 2000 even at that price, knowing that there’s another model with a much, much better screen. It’d be like buying a non-backlit GBA SP today.
OLED vitas are rare and cost like $250 for new and $100 pre owned
If the price bottoms out there I don’t see much point in getting one then, personally speaking. I have two PSTVs and still haven’t bought a single Vita game for them…
Well, I still have plenty of vita games pre-ordered, including a few limited editions.
Honestly, I am quite disappointed in this website. There are quite a few people in the hacking scene who work to open up the system, but do not support piracy and so on.
After that last post which pretty much tried to defend piracy and now this post that basically wishes for the Vita to die… Honestly, it’s disappointing to see this type of mindset here.
I quite enjoy homebrew and use a few apps on my dead systems such as the DS and PSP, but seeing people wishing for a system to die so they can use homebrew (well, most people just want to pirate) without worries, feels wrong. This actually makes me wish that the next gen of consoles and handhelds don’t get hacked at all.
The simple way of looking at it is, the Vita isn’t dead as long as there’s a homebrew scene alive. And there is – in the wake of HENkaku and now taiHENkaku, Adrenaline, Better Amphetamine, RetroArch and goodness knows what else there’s plenty of fun stuff to be going on with.
Not sure why people are saying OLED Phat Vitas are rarer and more expensive than the LCD Slims – here in the UK my experience has been that you can pick up a near mint condition Phat for £50-70, whereas the Slims tend to be closer to £100 if not more. And the Phat ones are much nicer. Basically you can keep one on 3.60 or below for homebrew and another for most up to date firmware if you need PSN etc.
The PS Vita is dead. It is but a fading memory. Sadly, for me, this isn’t the only time I have been disappointed, I was just recently that Sony basically discontinued the Sly Cooper game series by avoiding the subject. Maybe they want us to forget… For get about Sly Cooper… Forget about the PS Vita… Forget about everything of the past… Sony is ripping apart dreams with potential, potential to become even better than they ever were… There ripping apart the things that made our lives, or childhoods even, so much better, and leaving behind the ashes of the past… What can I say… I’m devastated. I have come to visit many mansions only to find ruins…… Ruins of the beloved past………. I have come to see the revival and redemption of things far too gone to come back from the other side… And yet I sit here typing this sad news on the one device that I say is dead, the PS Vita.
So I guess I’m going to hack the heck out of my PS Vita… I’ll take over where Sony left off. HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!!!!!!!!!! ; ]
Once a Hacker Always a Hacker ,}
What is up with the hacking misconceptions (Hacking in certain contexts is ok)
Does anyone know any exploits for PS Vita with the 3.63 Software Version?
I’m from Slovakia and there is no vita on market. Only accesorries are here. Just looking and I see 32GB memory card that costs 84€ when 32GB microSD costs 20€… Sony is really overpricing those things.