The PSP is one of my most beloved consoles I ever owned. When it came out in 2004, my friends and I imported the handheld from Japanese retailer Lik-Sang together with Lumines.

It’s been almost 5 years since the PS Vita got released and with some amazing games on the platform, the support for the console seems to be completely gone in the west with only indie games being released. This makes it very hard to find a good retailer to buy the PS Vita console in 2016 or 2017.

Why buy a PS Vita in the first place?

I’ve been wanting to buy a PS Vita for a while but never knew when I was actually going to use the console aside from sitting on the couch or in bed. To be honest, I still don’t have a good reason.. most of the games I would like to play on the Vita I can play on the PS4 like Gravity Rush. Then again.. you don’t always need a valid reason to spent your money, especially when its a hobby.

Especially being in Australia, none of the big stores like JB HiFI or EBGames stock the console new in box while EBGames only sell the same pre-owned (if in stock). Online retailers like Gamesmen sell the game refurbished and others like OZGameshop, DungeonCrawl and BeatTheBomb don’t stock the console at all.

Games are quite easy to get, of course you can get them digitally through PS Store but even if you’re a collector or just like having a game physical you can buy the games from most stores mentioned above.

So where can I get the PS Vita from?

So what if you want to buy a PS Vita in late 2016 or early 2017? I’ve tried to sum up all of the retailers that currently (early November 2016).

NOTE: I underestimated the amount of (Japanese) stores and different editions there are for the PS Vita. Article took me 30 minutes to write but already spend multiple hours just getting a basic idea of all the version and who sells what.

When I get some more time I’ll try to keep the list updated with (new) limited editions and prices.  This google sheet below is a comparison between the biggest shops in Japan and the US that sell the PS Vita.

For a full comparison check the Google Sheet PS Vita Console Comparison.