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Vita Sales Are Picking Up Thanks to PS4 Remote Play - IGN

  • ️Colin Moriarty
  • ️Mon Nov 17 2014

SCEA President and CEO talks about the present and future of Sony's handheld.

PlayStation Vita has a small -- but extremely fervent and dedicated -- user base. In a conversation with IGN, Sony Computer Entertainment America's President and CEO, Shawn Layden, discussed where PlayStation Vita sits right now, and where it may go in the future, in light of the conventional wisdom that Vita may be struggling mightily enough to see it ultimately disappear from the market.

I believe that Vita is the best handheld gaming experience, full stop, period.

"I believe that Vita is the best handheld gaming experience, full stop, period," Layden said. "Nothing comes close to that. You can talk about your mobile, you can talk about your tablet, you can talk about, you know, Nintendo platforms or what have you in the handheld space. I think, pound-for-pound, buck-for-buck, Vita is the best gaming experience you can have."

Discussing an experience he had recently in Tokyo, in which he was given one of the last 30 PSPs ever manufactured as a present (there are 82 million PSPs in the wild), Layden suggested that because Vita hasn't followed PSP's "hockey stick" sales spike, many people assume it's in trouble. PSP, he said, was a "slow burn" over time that brought it to that number following its spike early on.

Vita sales have actually been picking up ever since we enabled Remote Play on the handheld. There's a lot of interest in the PS4 community to have that opportunity.

"I think with Vita, we have a similar opportunity for us, and we can continue to cover the content," he continued. "I think a lot of that content, a lot of the big triple-A stuff, doesn't seem to be coming across any longer to the handheld. I think development teams have a lot of options of where to take their content, and every selection they make is, 'I do this version, I can't do that version'-type of thing."

"But the kind of content we see coming across, a lot of new developers -- call them indies, or just call them new to the market -- they see an opportunity across Vita."

And then there's Vita's Remote Play capabilities with PS4, which Layden noted have been a mild boon. "Vita sales have actually been picking up ever since we enabled Remote Play on the handheld. There's a lot of interest in the PS4 community to have that opportunity. We have not stood back from it. We have not started to withdraw from it. I think we're just seeing it maybe move into a new place as far as game content goes. But I'm still keen on it, I still play [it], and I still bring it up with the development community when I see them."

Layden, as well as a Sony PR representative present during the interview, declined to talk specific sales numbers for Vita.

For more on PlayStatin Vita, check out our Top 25 PlayStation Vita Games list, and browse our most recent Vita reviews.

Colin Moriarty is IGN’s Senior Editor. You can follow him on Twitter.