Vita ends 2016 with 57,000 sales in Japan

Ending the year on a high note, the Vita sold 57,170 units in Japan, according to the latest Media Create data. That brings it close to 825K sales for 2016. Not bad for a five year-old system who's last cosmetic reboot was a couple of years ago. Aside from a few new colours and ditching the OLED, the Vita is a museum piece in terms of technology, compared to the smartphone army.

All that said, Minecraft is the only Vita game in the top 10, hammering away with another 50,000 sales, taking it over the million boxed copy mark, I guess a lot of Japanese kids are learning the blocky game on the go.

Over the course of the year, the big problem is that only a couple of Vita games have really boosted hardware sales. The regular spikes from previous years are nowhere to be seen, with a horrendous flat line between the start and end of the year.

The rest, even the good ones, crack about 100-150K boxed sales before vanishing fast. Sure digital sales will help boost those numbers and add a long-tail, but the old suits in the big offices would still prefer their millions of yen up front.