All games developed for the PlayStation 4, with the exception of games requiring the use of special peripherals such as PlayStation Camera, are playable on the Vita through Remote Play. In addition to these input methods, specific to just the Vita, is a secondary touchpad that is on the back of the device. From 2013 onward, Sony was able to reverse the trajectory of the system by changing focus, aiming to be more of a niche product than one with mass market appeal – focusing more on small Western mobile phone games and mid-level Japanese developed games, and attaching it to the rise of popularity of its PlayStation 4 platform with its remote play connectivity functions. In the same month, VG247 released pictures of an early prototype version showing a PSP Go-like slide-screen design along with two analog sticks, two cameras and a microphone, though the report mentioned that overheating issues had since caused them to move away from the design in favor of a model more similar to the original PlayStation Portable device.

Presentation model shown at E3 2011, Gamescom 2011, IDEF 2011, Eurogamer 2011, TGS 2011 and Blunty's. The console is the successor to the PlayStation Portable, and a part of the PlayStation brand of gaming devices; as part of the eighth generation of video game consoles, it primarily competed with the Nintendo 3DS. Facebook, Flickr, Google Maps and YouTube no longer function as Vita apps, but continue to be available by using the Vita's web browser. While it largely maintains the original's overall structure and layout, the original's OLED screen has been replaced with a lower-cost LCD display.

PlayStationVita" Expands Its Entertainment Experience by Introducing Various Applications for Social Networking Services and Communications". With higher-profile games not pushing the system sales enough in 2012, big third-party companies like Ubisoft and Activision started reducing or eliminating support for the system, especially in the West. After a slow start in the worldwide market, it was invigorated in Japan with multiple releases in the Monster Hunter series.

Strong support by Japanese developers also helped, with companies such as Bandai Namco, Falcom, Koei Tecmo, 5pb, Compile Heart, Spike Chunsoft, and Atlus releasing many games in the JRPG and visual novels genre to help keep a steady flow of mid-level releases coming to the system.Its developer, Capcom, had decided to release Monster Hunter Tri and future Monster Hunter games exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS, where it would sell millions of copies for Sony's main competitor. While none of these particular high budget tech demos materialized into actual game releases, and few big-budget Western games would be made for both outside of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, [130] many Japanese development teams would go on to develop mid-level games that would release for both platforms, including the first two games from Falcom's Trails of Cold Steel series, Compile Hearts' original Hyperdimension Neptunia trilogy, and many entries from Tecmo Koei's Atelier and Dynasty Warriors series. The system is regarded as a commercial failure in the video game industry, and was significantly outsold by the Nintendo 3DS. In July 2014, Yoshida stated that the company would focus on it less as a dedicated handheld video game console, and more on its combination of uses, stating "it's not about individual Vita games any more.

In mid-2017, Glixel estimated that approximately 15 million units of the system had been sold, [81] while by September 2018, USGamer estimated it had grown to about 16 million units. Sony also revealed that the device would be using a mix of retail and digital distribution of games. Games from Sony's PlayStation Mobile initiative had initially been compatible but were removed when the service was shut down in September 2015. Since its launch, digital-only releases have slowly become more prominent, partially in an effort to reduce production costs for release on the platforms comparatively smaller user-base, and partially due to the influx smaller-scale indie mobile phone games that have always been digital-only releases. With the use of a Vita, PS4, and PS4 game, this allows a PS4 game to be run on the PS4, but its output transmitted to the Vita, with the Vita being used for the controller input, and the image and sound being transmitted to the Vita's screen and speakers instead of a television.

It also obtained million-selling software in the same year, with the Japanese Vita release of Minecraft. Reasons cited included the company focusing on supporting the PS4, and the fact that it felt that third party Japanese developers and Western indie developers were sufficiently supporting the device. A number of other third party apps commonly found on mobile devices have also been made available on the Vita: Crunchyroll, [141] [142] Facebook (removed in 2015), [143] [144] Flickr (broken), [141] [145] Google Maps (removed in 2015), [146] Hulu, [142] Live Tweet (Sony's third-party client for Twitter), [141] MLB. They had considered gaming on smartphones to be "just good enough for gameplay" and instead felt tablet computers to be more their competitors to the Vita, according to Phillips.