Sony will soon cease production of physical PlayStation Vita games

Along with the recent news that Sony will stop including PlayStation Vita games with the PlayStation Plus' Instant Game Collection starting next March, it looks like, according to a new report out of Kotaku, they will also soon cease the entire production of physical PlayStation Vita GameCard production by the end of Fiscal Year 2018, which would be March 31, 2019. Inside the article, a Sony spokesperson confirmed that report.

From that same report, it appears developers still interested in the platform will have until June 28, 2018 to submit product code requests and that all final purchase orders should be made by February 15, 2019. Of course, future digital releases can continue unabated, though who knows how long PSN services for the system will last which will once again bring up the growing argument surrounding digital rights and personal ownership.

While that will be the death of physical PlayStation Vita production (and perhaps a lot of the work specialty companies like Limited Run Games can perform), the PlayStation Vita never really caught on as well as its predecessor especially in the west compared to Japan. Although it received a refresh in the form of a slimmer handheld and redone buttons (among other changes), the Vita continued to be seemingly a disappointment in the eyes of Sony. And while it has been a bastion for those interested in visual novels and niche RPGs, even those have started to appear in large numbers on the Nintendo Switch, while the Nintendo 3DS continues to perform strongly.

The writing has been on the wall for a while, but with today's news, those of you who own a PlayStation Vita should cradle yours a little bit closer.