It had some decent games and the odd top tier title, the problem is that they weren't the type of games that make people go out and buy the console to begin with. I have no idea what Sony did in other regions but here in the UK they barely bothered promoting it, the only memorable advert was making it look more like a PS3/PS4 accessory for remote play.
It's like once it got past the release stage and didn't exactly take the work by storm they stopped caring about it. I guess Sony can only afford to focus on the PS4 which is their main revenue stream. The 3DS struggled at first but look at the staggered releases of Monster Hunter, the three Zelda games, Mario 3D Land & NSMB3, Smash Bros, Pokemon, Fantasy Life, Luigi's Mansion 2...... They also do very desirable themed consoles released with big games (the Majora's Mask is incredible!) to boost sales and garner attention, it's not like this is some new strategy that took Sony by surprise as they've always done this.
Japan got some sweet special edition Vita's though including the Final Fantasy and God Eater ones, just nothing for the West. Well that's not true actually, I remember the COD:Declassified one which kinda shows what they think of us over here!
