I'm still bewildered that Sony abandoned the portable industry when they were uniquely positioned with the fact that they also had a phone line.
The Xperia Play was too early but I'm pretty confident that now that you've got people very comfortable dropping a lot of money on a phone or the Steam Deck that Sony could've made a very nice successor to both the Vita and the Xperia Play with some kind of Android device with a captive Sony game store.
Sony owns a record label and film studio, phones and has had a cloud distribution network since 2006 via the PS3 but they completely missed the boat on music and video streaming.
Too many of their orgs were siloed from one another. As someone who has kind of admired their products, you can only laugh at how poorly things turned out for them given what we know today.
Just like Nokia, where the organization was made of dozens of business units trying to screw each other over. A great concept on paper ("We have no credible competitors, so to remain fresh, we have to become our own competitor"), but in reality they ended up shooting their own, supernumerous, feet
I loved my Xperia Play. PSX games on my phone with the controls? It was so good. Best phone I ever owned. It was ahead of its time in ways but I don't think the gaming landscape was all that suited/ready like it is now for handhelds.
The Xperia Play was too early but I'm pretty confident that now that you've got people very comfortable dropping a lot of money on a phone or the Steam Deck that Sony could've made a very nice successor to both the Vita and the Xperia Play with some kind of Android device with a captive Sony game store.