calling the PSP nub an analog stick is almost an insult to the Vita. It was this flat protrusion that you can switch out caps on, and you move it around like some thinkpad nub for analog movement. It made sense for the time, but I still ponder why they never added two of them. Held back so many potential games.

And yes, I still consider the Vita the last true "portable". potability in my mind implies pocketability, and the Switch and every other non-phone went beyond that. Devices like the Ayaneo Air do give me hope that that "pocketable" market may make a comback sooner than we think, though.

A "pocketable" gaming console in the modern world is essentially a smartphone with analog sticks.

There are "controller grips" or "controller mounts" for phones readily available and you can even pair it with Steam in-house streaming or Moonlight to play games at a quality that is impossible at this form factor for cheap.

Even at larger sizes it's difficult - The Nintendo Switch only worked because of great franchises and IP. The Steam Deck also required great technological investment into Linux and platform familiarity.

It's not hard to see why barely anyone's trying...

> A "pocketable" gaming console in the modern world is essentially a smartphone with analog sticks.

Yes in a technical sense. But no in a business and ecosystem sense.

PSP and Vita had very impressive game offerings that we don’t get on mobile to this day. The games felt like proper PlayStation games, only about 0.5 console generations behind. Back then it meant PS2.5 games. Today it would mean PS4.5 games on your handheld.

Switch is probably the closest today due to its first party games and very fluent support for many popular titles, unlike Steam Deck which is still a bit hacky and not everything it offers runs well. But Switch technically is several generations behind. PSP and Vita really felt like 2/3rds of your PlayStation 3.

No smartphone with a controller add on offers an experience of PlayStation 4.5 with first party titles and support. The business side was executed very well on PSP/Vita. The developers cared for that console.

Yeah, from a logistics point of view I understand it. No one is going to design a smartphone game to be gamepad first , and with the huge cloud push there's less pressure to make console games work on mobile anyway. So the last bastion (unless you have an amazing networking solution in your household) is basically "wait for Windows PCs to become almost smartphone sized".

I do in fact have a smartphone with a controller mount. Mostly for emulators at this point. But most of the time it can feel like no one is really taking advantadge of the hardware capabilities of modern phone hardware.

I have a Retroid Pocket Flip that I’ve loved for this exact reason. It’s just about powerful enough for Gamecube. More recent iterations are definitely powerful enough, and Gamecube is the library I love to play most.

the nub was a last minute addition iirc, it probably would've been extremely complicated to squeeze two onto it

The nub was announced at the same time as an announcement where the memory was quadrupled so I think it was probably intended to be only PS1 level games on it originally.

The Vita1000 OLEDs in general haven’t aged well, but the Vita2000 is still a strong option for mobile gaming. The handheld emulation machines aren’t made with the same build quality and the Steamdeck style consoles aren’t massive by comparison. The Switch Lite is another fine choice, but still much bigger than the PSPVita 2000.

I’m hoping strong sales of the PSPortal encourages development into a standalone mobile device, but I’m not hopeful it’ll replace my PSP3000/Vita2000 for daily driving.

My vita oled still functions fine? I have non oled variants as well but I feel no reason to use them, they just exist as spares.

Have the OLEDs all started dying or something?

OLEDs degrade faster and stronger than CRT or LCD. OLEDs have three major sources of degradation. The percentage of Vitas will good OLED screens are significantly decreasing.

* Burn in. Everyone knows about this, not a huge issue on most Vitas.

* Use degradation. Using the OLED panel will slowly cause it to become more dim, and each color dims at a different rate. Blue dims 10% by 1k hours, and by 10k hours you can expect half total brightness. The Vita was released 10 years ago, and many of them have seen thousands of hours of gameplay by now.

* UV exposure. UV radiation is damaging to OLED displays, even when powered off. Long periods of small exposure, even if kept enclosed in storage, can damage the display. For Vita displays this is the major problem. Vitas that were rarely used outside/near windows, and were stored in dark places will have the least amount of UV damage. All of them should be noticeably more dim than their time of manufacture if it were possible to compare side by side.

Ah yeah, i'm aware of OLED issues. But my Vita OLED shows none of these, save for some diminished brightness perhaps. But I only play them indoors anyway and honestly at this point, i've exhausted most of the library worth playing exclusively on the vita, and I have better emulation machines.

The OLED vita side by side with the non OLED is still my preferred display. You are right though, if you want to rack up thousands of hours and add another decade onto the decade already past, the LCD unit is the better bet.

I have two OLED Vitas, a beat up one I used for 10 years and a gently used complete in box I imported from Japan. I prefer the LCD, and have for several years. However this is only a recent development (3-4 years) when I noticed the LCD at max brightness was significantly better in bright conditions than the OLED was. I've checked some of my friend's OLED Vitas too, and none of them are nearly as good as they were in the old days. The hue shift on some of the screens is pretty noticeable.

Looking back the old screen was awesome. Going forward I think the LCD Vitas will be a better pick.

My vita1000 is still as it was on release, I personally love the screen

screen is great, feels really high quality in general, but the proprietary charging port and lack of internal storage are huge negatives against it

Yeah, that’s fair

>>The Vita1000 OLEDs in general haven’t aged well

Really? That's an interesting opinion - I own both and vastly prefer the original Vita due to that OLED screen, it's just better in every way(the screen).

The slim fits in the hands better and charges via micro-USB.

The white Vita OLED was an excellent device

I dunno, I seem to recall the original Gameboy being this huge brick and that was entirely fine. Dunno where I put it, though... might've tossed it when I got my Gameboy Colour, which seems like the stupid kind of thing I would've done in my early teens.

not really an opinion, the mura effect is the ubiquitous and well-documented flaw of Vita 1000 OLEDs

You can’t have an opinion about whether a flaw bothers you?

Check out Ayn Odin 2 Mini, it's an Android handheld with a PS Vita design, you can use it to emulate lots of games too (including Vita using Vita3k emulator).

At first, I thought it was like $35, and was almost ready to order it. Then, I realized, in my morning haze, that I'm not seeing the decimal point, and it is actually $340.

For that kind of cash, you might as well get the real Vita from a second-hand market. Better yet, for that kind of cash, get Steam Deck, unless you have some restrictions like OP (i.e. "SD is too big")

The real Vita can't play every PS2 game, or any GC game. Different device. And the Steam Deck is vastly different in pocketability, yes.

It seems interesting, but I hate asymmetric gamepad layouts. That's one thing I quite like about the Steam Deck: that they made the layout symmetric.

the ps2 emulator can run these pretty well (pcsx2). Though I haven't tried it on the steam deck I'm sure you can get SoTC and Demon's Souls on the deck via emulation.