PS Vita almost had Switch-like capabilities, says former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida

Former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida has discussed why the company's PS Vita handheld didn't sell well, stating Sony didn't have the resources to split between two platforms but originally it had similar capabilities to Nintendo's Switch.

Since its release in 2011, the Vita handheld is estimated to have sold 10-15m units - that's far less than the 80m of its predecessor, the PSP, and less than either the Wii U or the GameCube.

Speaking on the Kinda Funny Gamescast, Yoshida suggested why he felt Vita sales under-performed.

Shuhei Yoshida's First Interview After PlayStation - Kinda Funny Gamescast

"There are multiple reasons why Vita didn't work," he said. "It worked in a way that people loved playing games, especially indie games, on PS Vita. It was lovely hardware."

"Several technical choices we as a company made weren't really good ones," he continued. "One of which was the proprietary memory cards. That was a mistake, people had to spend more money to get the memory cards."

Further, he admitted the back touch "was not necessary". "Sometimes the team made amazing prototypes that felt so good and that misled everyone involved," he said, noting it added cost to the hardware. Similarly the OLED screen increased the production cost of each unit.

Additionally, the Vita dev kit had a video output to allow the handheld to connect to screens, but this was removed for the consumer release.

"It was really a bad idea," Yoshida joked, in a nod to the Switch's capabilities. "The development team removed that feature just to save a few cents of cost."

Yoshida then concluded: "I think the biggest reason Vita didn't do as well as we had hoped was that we had to spread all of our efforts/resources into two different platforms. And we didn't have that resource."

He added Sony didn't have a big enough talent pool across its studios to support both its home consoles (PS3 and PS4) as well as the handheld Vita. And as the consoles were more popular, they were prioritised.

This, Yoshida believes, is why Nintendo has been successful, as the rival company has pooled its resources into a single platform with dual capabilities. He even joked the Switch is the Vita 2.

Still, PlayStation's legacy, said Yoshida, is providing cutting edge technology at affordable prices, so there was never a discussion of combining efforts into a single piece of hardware as Nintendo did.

In the same interview, Yoshida also touched on Sony's live-service game aspirations and said he likely would've resisted the move towards live-service games had he been in Hermen Hulst's position as CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment.

"For me, I was managing this annual budget, so I was responsible for allocating money to what kinds of games to make," said Yoshida. "If the company was considering [a focus on live-service games], it probably didn't make sense to stop making another God of War or single-player game, and put all the money into these service games.

"However, what they did after I moved on and Hermen [Hulst] took over is Sony added a lot more resources. I don't think they told Hermen to stop making single-player games. They said 'these games are great, just continue doing that, and we'll give you additional resources to work on these service games and try it'."

He continued: "I'm sure they knew it's risky. The chance of a game being successful in this hugely competitive genre would be small. However, the company, knowing that risk, gave Hermen the resources and chance to try it. I think that’s the way they did it. In my mind, that’s great, and hopefully some games will become successful.

"I'm lucky Helldivers 2 did so well!" he joked, adding: "You cannot plan for success in this industry, that's the most fun part of this business. I hope that this strategy will work in the end.

"If I was in the position of Hermen, probably I would've tried to resist that direction. Maybe that's one of the reasons they removed me from the first-party, because they knew I wouldn't do it!"

Yoshida left PlayStation earlier this week after over 30 years working for the company, including as boss of PlayStation Worldwide Studios between 2008 and 2019.

His first new project? Voicing a bright green bird-like mascot in Kaizen Game Works' forthcoming Promise Mascot Agency.