Former PlayStation boss Jack Tretton regrets not having had the weapons to make PS Vita a success. According to him, it was a bit “the orphan” of Sony.
Many have already mourned the PS Vita, but Jack Tretton, the ex-CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, still has the fate of the small laptop in the air. During an interview with axioshe said he regrets Sony didn’t do more to support the console.
The PS Vita ‘was a bit of an orphan’
The PlayStation Vita could boast some great assets, but without real backing behind it would be doomed. And it’s accurate that lack of support, which Jack Tretton regrets today :
There were some technologies that I thought were good but didn’t get the support they needed. When you work for a big company you must love everything they do. It doesn’t matter if it’s to your liking or not. So you have a new technology that you want to introduce to industry and consumers, but do you have the marketing budget to promote it? Do you have the means to help and encourage developers to create games to support this initiative?
And sometimes a technology is born in the hope that it will be adopted.
In contrast to its big sister PSP, the PS Vita hit the wall hard. All in all, it will appear to have sold around 15 million units, versus more than 80 million for the PlayStation Portable. A striking difference.
Regret, but no hostility
Such a statement in hindsight could make one believe in a reckoning. But no, Jack Tretton easy
Could the PS Vita have had a better life and massive support from Sony? Absolutely yes. But if Jack Tretton thinks she came too late, she also left at a very bad time. During the PS3 generation, at a time when PlayStation’s finances were in the red. So we imagine that the decision to ditch the laptop to try and launch the PlayStation 3 was perhaps the most “logical” decision in the company’s eyes.
Still, Sony Interactive Entertainment has tried over the years to “erase all traces of the PS Vita,” which is difficult to bridge. Of late, it’s the PS Plus Premium that has scrapped the beauty.
