Celebrating 10 years of the Vita in Japan

The Vita was released 10 years ago in Japan today and Japanese sites have been "celebrating" with a few look-back pieces. Famitsu's is pretty generic, Dengeki and 4Gamer don't seem to have bothered, and even PlayStation Japan's own tweet is relying on crowdsourcing memories rather than celebrating its own achievements, but at least has a cheery image. 

At least some Japanese Vita owners are making the effort with some gorgeous pics like the one below. It all started so brightly with over 320,000 sales on the opening weekend and good reviews for the exclusive games. 

A few western sites still have their launch day pieces up, Phys.org (randomly) is good noting (hysterically, with hindsight) that "Pre-orders are very strong," Andrew House, head of Sony's games unit, told Kyodo News and other media in Tokyo earlier in the week. Without giving precise figures he said the company was aiming for sales of the PS Vita to far outstrip the 73 million PlayStation Portable units sold around the world since 2004.

I'll hold off until the UK release for a full-bore celebration, but since it is nearly Christmas, here's a look back at the Vita's last hurrah/rough ride across 2021. An amazing feat with a small band of fans and publishers keeping the handheld rolling. That's despite Sony trying everything it can to erase it from history. 

Sony spent 2021 putting up pointless barriers for developers before shutting the Vita's PSN to new releases. It continues to hamstring the stores and strip them to the bare bones as publishers silently remove game after game. 

Since then, a string of core titles have had their online features cut off, which is fair enough given their age. And we are down to the last couple of low-key physicals with more people turning to homebrew to extend their libraries with ports and some exciting indies like Purified hopefully on the way. 

At the end of its time, it has been the community that has kept the Vita rolling, and we celebrate those efforts into 2022.