Sony Pours Cold Water on Potential Successor to PS VITA

You shouldn’t be expecting a successor to the PS Vita if quotes from Sony Interactive Entertainment America boss, Shawn Layden are anything to go by.

Speaking to TIME magazine, Layden said “To be honest, the Vita just didn’t reach critical mass in the US or Western Europe,”

” I don’t know if it was that it was more technology people had to carry around or more things to charge, or whether their phone or tablet were taking care of that. But once the content slowed in that pipeline, it became hard to keep the Vita as a going concern.”

The Vita continues to sell well in Japan where portable gaming is king. However, the lack of exclusives on the Vita seemed to have irreparably damaged its prospects in Europe and North America.

With the success of the Nintendo Switch, it proved that there is a market for portable gaming in the West. “It’s definitely what that fanbase has been waiting for,” Layden said. “When you look at our numbers, I think it shows that a lot of gamers are a two-console family. And quite often those two consoles are PlayStation and Nintendo sitting side-by-side.”

Layden also revealed sales figures for the PS4 and PS4 PRO. In total, over 60 million PS4 consoles have been sold. Of every 5 PlayStation 4s sold, one of them is a PRO. In North America, the PS4 is currently ahead by 2-1 against Xbox. But in Europe, it increases to 3-1 against Microsoft’s console.