Jack Tretton suggested PS Vita was orphaned by Sony in an interview where the former Sony boss reminisced on his tenure at the company.

“There were certainly technologies that I thought were good but just didn’t have the level of support they needed,” Tretton said via a new interview with Axios.

When pressed on specifics on what projects Sony worked on that didn’t get support before he left in 2014, Tretton noted PS Vita was orphaned by Sony.

Tretton also named 3D gaming and even PlayStation VR, the latter of which launched after he left.

The former Sony boss said being a successful branch of a big corporation meant making sacrifices at times when other parts of the company weren’t doing well.

“So, you come up with new technology to introduce to the industry and the consumers. But do you have the marketing budget to really drive the message? Do you have the developer support dollars to incent them to develop games to support this initiative? And sometimes you would birth technology and hope that it caught on,” he said.

While PlayStation Vita, or as it was later rebranded to PS Vita, launched in 2011 in Japan, it was released worldwide in 2012 and had strong initial support from both Sony and from third party developers.

Support from both Sony and third parties waned in the coming years unfortunately, and Sony eventually killed the handheld in 2018 and production ended in 2019.

Hearing PS Vita was orphaned by Sony makes sense considering they confirmed its digital stores would shut down and developers still releasing games for PS Vita learned the news as it went public.

Following substantial public blowback, Sony walked back this announcement but it’s only a matter of time until they pull the plug for good. After all, Nintendo does it without batting an eyelash regardless of however much their fans cry.