PlayStation Vita

The PlayStation Vita was Sony’s second handheld console. It was released in 2011, during the eighth generation of consoles, and competed with the Nintendo 3DS.

The PS Vita had strong hardware for a handheld of its time, and the original model had an OLED screen. It could also play many PSP games bought digitally, although it had no UMD drive for PSP discs.

You could also use the PS Vita for Remote Play with a PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 3, letting you play without a TV.

The PS Vita built up a loyal fanbase that has modified the console for its own uses, but overall it was a commercial failure. It sold far fewer units than the 3DS, with estimated sales of about 16 million worldwide.

Analysts mostly blame Sony itself. Sony released few games of its own for the console, and without that support there was never a real push from third-party studios.

Thanks to the work of its community, the PS Vita is a popular handheld for running emulators. Its decent power, built-in support for PSP and PlayStation games and overall design make it well suited to the job.

Emulating the PS Vita itself has taken longer. The main PS Vita emulator is Vita3K, an open source project for Windows, Linux, macOS and Android. It is still experimental, but a growing number of commercial games are now playable.