The treatment of the Vita is really disappointing, but understandable. The Vita is not a well received system, which is a little bit unfortunate. It's a fantastically well made system. Excellent battery life, it feels really good, the joysticks are on par with regular controllers (and better than the PS3's), it's powerful enough to run a lot of games, and it fills a niche for "weird old games that you forgot about." I primarily used it for indie games and old games from PS1 and PS2, and maybe that's what they should've been pushing. I certainly hope that's what they go for with another handheld. I understand the appeal of the 3DS but the Vita felt like a better made system overall. I'm not a huge fan of cutesy, so I really enjoyed it, and I've gotten more enjoyment out of that than any other device outside of my computer (Person 4 Golden is still 100 hour longs! Woo!), but I'm also in the minority here. Most people don't buy handhelds as emulators for old things they want to play on the go, they buy handhelds to play Pokemon or Animal Crossing, or Monster Hunter if you're in Japan. The Vita really didn't have that. Dunno. It must just end up being something dropped while Sony tightens it's belt and settles in for this generation. Maybe not fully dropped, but who knows. I'd liked to see a new handheld from Sony sometime in the future with a larger focus on PSNow, but at the moment the Vita is at a weird crossroads between emulator and platform.
I get uncomfortable when I'm playing on a 3DS. Not so with the Vita. I don't feel like paying for a 3DS XL, doesn't seem worth it. I might for Smash Bros. 3DS, but I think the Vita is better made and I've put more time into it than I ever did on my 3DS. It's drowning, which sucks, but hopefully it becomes really hackable like the PSP did. Edit: I mean shit, FF Type-0 isn't even coming to Vita. That doesn't even make any sense.
Yeah I really like the Vita and I think it has a lot of potential. It's probably one of my favorite handhelds in terms of the console itself. I own a 3DS as well and honestly I think the Vita is a better system. Unfortunately, Sony seems to want to just kill it. Without a steady flow of games, without good marketing, without effort, the machine really is going to die. And that's a shame. I think the Vita could have been so much more.