Is the Vita dead in the water? Short answer, no!

That Sony Gamescom conference sure was a spectacular feast, it definitely proved that they definitely know how to support their console so that it’s worth buying – well one of their consoles at least! Yes, all over the web there are fans crying their eyes out that the Vita is now a forgotten product and a mistake of a purchase; for some peculiar reason, there was only a focus on the magnificent Playstation 4, yet not their currently struggling handheld.

It’s easy to hate on the Vita, to complain that the console isn’t well supported, perhaps requires a price cut or even rant ‘lol, vita has no games’; all of which is completely irrelevant, as the Vita is actually a fantastic product!

The Vita is in fact actually being supported, there are actual games for it! IGN has quite a handy list of upcoming Vita games, with 6 of these games being released this week alone; it’s also worth noting that this excludes the PS+ free games offered, or the growing selections of PS One games or less publicised Indie games. The argument of ‘no games’ has become a simple attack trigger which many people have become accustomed to, without actually acknowledging that there is quite a handful of selection of games.  A Sony executive, Shahid Kamal Ahmad, took the opportunity of listing a huge amount of game names on Twitter which are to be released on the Vita, which I’d really suggest for people to check out. Online writer Adrian Mules then happened to support the Vita had games with this interesting analysis of Sony games which he’s played:

“There might be a lot of games but none are worth playing…”,  you haven’t really given the Vita a chance then have you?  The beauty of the Vita is that there’s a variety of different game genres each with different game mechanics that provides for a very unique user experience when using the handheld. Unlike the 3DS (which I do thoroughly love too), the Vita contains actual games which can be considered as gems which don’t rely on the same primary IP’s every time – I sure do love my Mario’s, Zelda’s and so on, but let’s face it, the third party selection for the 3DS isn’t as delectable as the first party 3DS games. Which is where the Vita comes in, both handhelds have great amounts of Indie games, but seeing as the Vita is more powerful as a whole, the Vita opens brand new opportunities in porting popular PC Indie games (and creating brand new ones) onto this fantastic system! But the argument isn’t only resolved by JUST Indie games, a simple search in the Metacritic ‘Highest rated Vita games‘ wonderfully proves that it’ll be incredibly difficult to actually become bored from this console.

So what is the problem? I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again, the system is poorly marketed. No one pays attention to the Vita because organisations don’t provide attention to the Vita! There’s a lack of promotion of the games on offer, of the console features and a lack of availability in stores and demo products to actually provide interest in the console. Gamescom could have been a perfect time to address and highlight some of these problems, but understandably Sony chose to focus on just the Vita. But why?

Because Gamescom is a easy time to build hype, there won’t be massive announcements which are usually introduced at conferences such as E3, but instead these conferences are just used to build on the hype for the promises introduced at E3. Which is why I believe the Xbox One exclusive Tomb Raider is just a stunt, it will inevitably be ported to the PS4 and PC a short while after the PC release, but to build hype Microsoft assured for the conference to only highlight it as a full exclusive and not express the possibility of it being a timed exclusive. In Sony’s case, they built the hype on the PS4 as that’s their most popular and successful console, but there is inevitably still support for the Vita, it’s just not as promoted as their other consoles.

No, the Vita isn’t dead in the water. All Sony have to do is promote the handheld well, but the system has a great amount of games and future games and has every quality to actually make the system purchase feel worthwhile.