Nintendo Switch isn’t the final nail in Vita’s coffin — PS4 is

Ever since the announcement of Nintendo’s forthcoming home-portable hybrid, the Switch, there have been ample suggestions that the new system will be the “final nail in Vita’s coffin.” Given how many news stories, forum posts, and YouTube videos are throwing that phrase around (even if in disagreement), it seems many people are certain that Nintendo’s reveal was PlayStation Vita’s death sentence, and the space between now and Switch’s March launch will be a slow walk down the green mile.

I, however, doubt the Switch will bury the Vita — not immediately, at least. The fact is that a new generation of consoles is always going to slowly supplant those that came before it; the PlayStation 3, for instance, was always going to enter the limelight while the PlayStation 2 was phased out. However, that process isn’t immediate — Sony only ceased PS2 production in December 2012, six years after its successor hit the market. And considering Sony doesn’t have a follow-up to Vita in the works (at least, not one we know of), there really isn’t any reason to discontinue the device in the near future.

More than likely, Vita will continue to live on for several years, supported by the indies and Japanese studios that have found it be a worthwhile platform for their games, due to the relative ease of developing on the system and the trigger happy buying habits of users. As long as these companies are still making money from their investments on Vita, they’ll keep making games. And Sony must be making some money on Vita, too — why release it in new colours if it isn’t pulling in profit?

If the Switch signals any sort of death, it won’t be the Vita’s — it’ll be the idea that handhelds have to strictly be handheld. Assuming Nintendo’s upcoming system takes off, it’ll set a new bar for what’s expected from portables, and any potential challenger will need to match the home-or-away functionality to be competitive.

Sony won’t do that. Sony already has a console that plugs into your TV. It’s called the PlayStation 4.

By releasing a, say, Vita 2 that’s a portable capable of becoming a home console, Sony would effectively be releasing a competitor to its own existing home console, potentially confusing consumers with multiple devices, and cannibalising sales. The existence of the PS4 makes a Switch-style Vita successor infeasible, and that’s before taking into account PlayStation VR.

The strategy behind the Switch seems to be to bolster Nintendo’s ailing home console presence with its strong position in the portable market, all while preventing its development staff from spreading themselves thin across multiple pieces of hardware. Sony already has to split its teams, having some work on PS VR-integrated games while others make traditional PS4 titles. Adding a third platform into the mix would only spread the devs thinner.

But let’s play with hypotheticals for a moment. Sony has already begun iterating on the PS4, as with the suped up Pro model — isn’t it possible another iteration could be a handheld hybrid? I guess that’s conceivable, but whole point of iterative PS4s is increasing the system’s power to keep it competitive with PCs and the rival VR platforms, Oculus Rift and Vive. Portable systems, on the other hand, have typically been less powerful than their at-home counterparts. And even if Sony wanted to cram a top-of-the-line computer and a gorgeous screen into a device the size of tablet, it would make for an expensive purchase.

Of course, I should point out that Sony has previously dabbled in putting its handheld games on the (somewhat) big screen: remember PlayStation TV, the Vita brain that plugged into a television and was controlled with a DualShock 3 or 4? This wasn’t really a competitor to the PS4, though — it was marketed more like a streaming box in Asia, and throughout the world, was promoted as an accessory that could stream PS4 games onto different TVs throughout your house.

And really, maybe that’s the future for Sony’s portable offering: using Remote Play and services like PlayStation Now to make games that were once bound to your TV playable from anywhere with an internet connection. Remote Play became compatible on PCs and Macs earlier this year, and PS Now is slowly expanding internationally — more than likely, these are the places where Sony is placing its chips.