It can also handle PS2 games, and emulator hacks open the door to making older games run flawlessly in widescreen and using HD texture replacement mods. Where the Vita was the best way to play PS1 games for many years, those games can now be emulated beautifully on the Deck with DuckStation, running at higher resolutions than they did originally. As Vitas around the world gradually wear out and Sony eventually stops selling its old games, I hope Vita fans look to the Steam Deck as a replacement. But the Deck has many other strengths in addition to being more powerful: cloud saves, Steam's controller configurator, and community tools like EmuDeck that come from it being an open platform. Part of me wishes the Steam Deck was as svelte as the Vita: I'd love to be able to slip it into my pocket instead of carting it around in a chunky carrying case in my backpack.

The hardware was as much a draw as the games themselves. Still, the Vita was such a versatile device for its time, it was the kind of system that inspired people to see what they could play on it. The Vita also had an active hacking and emulation scene, though it wasn't powerful enough to emulate many systems past the Super Nintendo without some issues. It was more or less abandoned by Sony, but indies and niche Japanese games kept supporting it for years, with Vita RPGs still being released in Japan as recently as 2020. Sony infamously referred to the Vita as a 'legacy platform' in 2015, only three years after its release, and it seemed like the Vita spent most of its lifetime slowly dying (relatable). The Vita was even backwards compatible with PSP games, further enriching its catalog.

Vita owners could not only download loads of classic PlayStation games, they could also stream games from the PS4 to the Vita with Remote Play, making new, high-end console games portable too. In the same way Valve packed the Steam Deck with features and control options for any conceivable game, Sony gave the Vita a pair of analogue sticks, cameras, Bluetooth, motion controls, a touchscreen and touchpad on the back, inputs for every conceivable situation. The PlayStation Vita was the do-it-all gaming handheld of 2012.

The steam deck