Will PlayStation Make Another Handheld?

There is no doubt in my mind that in some Sony boardroom, execs are discussing whether or not to bring back handhelds after seeing the success of Nintendo Switch, which is currently sitting at 107.65 million and is projected to become the best selling system of all time and the Steam Deck which has been released to glowing reviews and essentially makes your PC experience portable. The Steam Deck is still waitlisted and there was nearly a million preorders before it was released. This doesn’t even mention popular handhelds like the Playdate and the Analog Pocket that have carved out a decent niche of success for themselves as well.

The point is there still seems to be a desire for dedicated handheld gaming that mobile is just not offering at the moment and it seems like it will be a long time before mobile phones become in line with the power of consoles and PC’s. When it comes to PlayStation handhelds there are a few questions we need to answer. What went right? What went wrong? and will PlayStation make another handheld?

What Went Right?

Sony’s first foray into the dedicated handheld gaming market was considered a pretty big success by all metrics. Considering that sales data is not the easiest to come by, the PlayStation Portable sits around the 10th best selling system of all time where the Game Boy Advance and the PSP could be interchanged as they both have sales between 80-82 million. The last official figures reported from Sony indicate that the PlayStation Portable sold 76.4 million as March 31, 2012. However, its very likely that a few more million kept trickling out.

In the same report Sony also indicated that the PSP had sold over 331 million units of software, which works out to an average attach rate of 4.33, which is decent and comparable to Nintendo 3DS, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance.

The PSVITA should have been considered a bump in the road. Granted this is a long and expensive road. Sure, PSVita didn’t sell nearly as good as the PSP, at around a fifth of what Sony’s first handheld sold with somewhere is the ballpark of 16 million.

If Nintendo quit after a bump in the road, they would have maybe stopped at the N64, or the GameCube or definitely the WiiU, but they didn't and we have had great experiences thanks to their persistence. Innovative systems that have pushed all of gaming forward like the Wii and the Switch have all been thanks to Nintendo's failures. Who knows what product Sony could have dreamed up with the same level of persistence.

Sony was ahead of their time with the PSVITA for a few reasons. The PlayStation Vita launched in 2011 with an OLED screen, which is only now becoming the norm due to the high cost. It took the Nintendo Switch two iterations until they finally added OLED in 2021, which is a full decade after the PlayStation Vita launched.

The Vita also featured a touch screen on both the front and the back. If you think about what was going on back in 2011 when the system launched with dual touchscreens, the market wasn’t fully there yet either. The iPhone 4 had just gone on sale, the iPad had just gone on sale months earlier and the WiiU had yet to launch with its giant fisher price touch screen. Not only would being one of the first to produce touch screen for the masses be expensive, you are also working with developers who are still figuring out how to program for these features, which is why only a few games took full advantage of both touchscreens

For the time the PlayStation Vita had some beefy specs and some great hardware features including dual analog sticks, capacitive touch, and the option to purchase a 3G version with separate data plan.

What went wrong?

Proprietary Formats

One of Sony’s biggest problems dating back decades is their insistence on proprietary media and the PlayStation Vita was no different. My childhood is littered with Sony media formats that never stood the test of time including Betamax, MiniDiscs, and UMD’s, which were the format of choice for the PSP. Games and memory cards were both proprietary, meaning that even if you bought the system at launch for 249US, you needed to spend around another 100 for a decent size PSVITA memory card.

The Switch on the other hand had some internal storage, which alleviated the need for an instant memory card but it also allowed whatever memory card you wanted to purchase. Understandably, this was 6 years later, so Nintendo had the benefit of seeing what worked and what didn't. Games for the PlayStation Vita were also cartridges similar to how the Nintendo Switch cartridges look, which are more costly to manufacture than typical gaming media.

Confusion

There is also the thought that Sony might have oversaturated the market with too many options leading to confusion from many potential casual buyers. First there was the PSP and a few iterated models, then a bigger iteration of the PSP was the PSP GO and then shortly after was the PSVITA. With the benefit of hindsight, the amount of different handhelds Sony offered in a short period of time feels reminiscent of Nintendo and their follow up to the Wii. Everyone knows that one of the major failings of the WiiU was the lack of distinction from its predecessor.

With Sony’s PlayStation, it is clear which model is better than the next as they have all been numbered. Call it boring, but there is zero confusion when it comes to buying a new PlayStation. The PS5 is better than the PS4, the PS4 is better than the PS3 and so on. When it came to their portable offerings the messaging was much less clear. Portable, Go Street, and Vita. If you asked a random person on the street to put these in order of least powerful to most powerful, they would have no idea.

Not Premium Titles

One of the biggest issues in my eyes is that there wasn’t premium support. After a few years the PlayStation Vita found strong success with indie titles like Spelunky, Rogue Legacy, and Hotline Miami. However, as we have seen since home consoles became a thing, you need first party premium titles to this day, which is why we see Sony and Microsoft making all these acquisitions. It’s not that they didn’t have premium games, they were just more of the kirlkland version.

The PlayStation Vita launched with Uncharted: Golden Abyss, which was a good idea to launch with Nathan Drake as he had become a system seller but no matter how good the game was, it wasn’t made by Naughty Dog, Resistance: Burning Skies wasn’t made by Insomniac, and Killzone: Mercenary wasn’t made by Guerrilla proper. There is nothing wrong with any of these games to be clear, they just aren’t Coca-Cola.

The difference with Nintendo is that they have premium titles available on both their handhelds and home consoles. When you look at Nintendo’s flagship IP like Pokemon, Anything Mario, and Zelda some of their best entries are on handheld.

After going through all of these major issues it’s easy to see why the PSVITA never caught fire.

Will Sony Make Another Handheld?

At the very minimum Sony has to be considering taking another plunge into the handheld market but how realistic is the possibility at the moment. There are a few reasons that you could point to as a reason that it might return.

As of December 31, 2019 on Sony’s earnings report, the company noted that it had sold over 5 million units of PSVR. This is an encouraging figure because as we now know, Sony is trying VR again with PSVR2 which is likely due out late 2022 or early 2023. If they are willing to try something that sold 5 million, then handheld has a chance

The PSVR coin has two sides though, as I can’t see Sony overextending themselves with PlayStation 5 and likely the Pro version that is already in the works, PSVR2 and a new Portable PlayStation. I would imagine that if we are to see a new handheld from PlayStation it would be after PSVR2 ships, which would mean a new handheld would be 2024 at the earliest.

As mentioned earlier, Sony has to see all the success that the competition is having in the handheld market and as the saying goes a rising tide raises all ships. Sony is also not jumping into the handheld gaming market blind either as this would be their third attempt and they have to have learned valuable lessons from the first two iterations.

One thing that has drastically changed since 2011 when the PSVita launched is how much faster internet speeds have become in addition to being more accessible to the masses and how much cheaper and smaller memory has become (you can get a Terabyte hard drive on an iPhone now, which is bigger than the PS5 hard drive). The reasoning for mentioning the speed of internet and hard drives is because digital media is now much more widely accepted then it was a decade ago. Digital sales were already trending upwards but that was accelerated by the pandemic when people realized how simple the process is.

Closing Thoughts

There is some speculation going around that Sony is interested in taking another swing at a PlayStation Portable that will launch in the same window as the PS5 Pro but this is all largely unsubstantiated as I have found nothing credible that backs this at all.

From the outside looking in, there seems to be a lot of reasons why PlayStation should make another handheld, whether due to success in the market or technology catching up with their early ideas but Nintendo Switch scratched on the idea of being able to play your games anywhere that the Steam Deck is following up on and if Sony can take some of these ideas just a little bit further it seems like a guaranteed success.