Tretton: Vita was great but arrived too late

Ex-Sony Computer Entertainment America boss Jack Tretton has weighed in on the performance of the company’s handheld console, PlayStation Vita.

Speaking on IGN’s Unfiltered show, the former Sony exec said that internally, the Vita console was viewed as a great device but by the time it hit shelves the market for portable gaming had shifted with the advent of the mobile sector.

Tretton also highlighted the success of Vita’s predecessor, the PSP.

"Now that I don’t work there anymore, I think internally it was: ‘This is a great machine, it’s just too late.’ The world has shifted to portable devices that aren’t dedicated gaming machines," he said.

PSP was incredible successful. I love what it did. It brought a console-like experience and genres to an older gamer that didn’t typically have console-like games to play on a portable platform. But Vita was a very nice machine at a time where people didn’t feel like they needed a dedicated portable device.”

PlayStation Vita launched in the UK in 2012. Initially pushed as a high-powered machine with PS3-like experiences, hardware sales staggered following its release and thus few triple-A projects came to the platform.

In the West, Sony then repositioned the machine as home for indie titles, as well as being a means of playing PS4 games via Remote Play. A Slim version of the Vita launched in the West in 2014.