The Playstation Vita is an unusual beast. I am currently listening to a podcast about gaming and the reader email section is always a highlight. This particular email is talking about the Playstation Vita; is it a failure? Was the mobile gaming competition too high? Was the system too unusual? Wasn’t it pushed far enough by its parent company? There’s a lot of factors to consider, but one of the guys on the podcast used to work for a studio under Playstation’s banner, and they made one of the Vita’s standout games: Tearaway.
One of the reasons that he posits is because of the system’s unusual inputs, especially the back touch pad. With a simple touch screen the system might have flourished a little more, but developers became confused about which inputs to use and how best to utilise the inputs. As a result they simply use the standard inputs and any potentially interesting features are missed out.