The PS TV released in North America in October of last year. The device promised to give gamers a wide variety of options, allowing gamers to play PlayStation Vita games and stream media. Sadly, it did not fare well. Now, Sony president of worldwide studios Shuhei Yoshida has spoken out on the matter.
In an interview with Game Informer, Shuhei Yoshida spoke on the future of the PS TV, and what went wrong. He states: “It didn’t capture the consumers’ imagination. It’s a hard concept to explain. You could say it’s a mini-console, it’s a video streaming device. If we say it’s a mini-console, like other mini-consoles, people expect a better device like PS4 and Xbox One. It’s short in that delivery. When you say it’s a video streaming device, there are other devices with higher def video. It has some unique things like remote play of PS4 games. It can do many things, but it’s not easy to say this one thing is extremely good. I think that’s the reason we were not able to convince people at the original price.”
Yoshida also speaks on why the PS Vita is not getting any AAA first-party games: “We are not making games like Killzone Mercenary, big budget Vita games anymore. The expectation of the graphical quality and size of the world for these type of games have risen after the launch of PlayStation 4. The same thing happened with the PSP. People were so excited to be able to play PS2 graphics on the go. After PS3 launched, expectations grew. The types of games on PSP were not as attractive.”
Yoshida also says that the future of the Vita is cross-buy games and indie titles. He says titles releasing on both the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita are what gamers can expect going into the future.