[goosedragons]

The Vita, as flawed as it was, was pretty incredible at release too. The OLED screen, the PS3ish level visuals, a second analog stick finally. It was easily my favorite console from when I got it until I picked up a Switch.

Sony really bungled it with the over draconian DRM and proprietary memory cards. Had it used microSD cards and not been SO anal about how anything got on there it could have done a lot better. And had they ditched the back touch panel and added real R2/L2 in New 3DS style and perhaps clickable thumbsticks, it could have been something!

[gambiting]

I think Sony was just incredibly scared of having a repeat of the PSP situation where piracy was absolutely dominating, they sold crazy number of consoles and very few games(comparatively). I knew at least 10-15 people with PSPs when I was a teenager and none of us ever owned a single actual PSP game on a disc.