The Vita basically became a niche system past its first year or so, so you wouldn't really hear about it unless you're purposely seeking out info. It didn't commercially perform to the extent Sony wanted it to, so they quickly dropped virtually all support for it, and the AAA developers followed suit. Mobile gaming definitely hurt it, as it hurt the 3DS too, but there were other factors. The Vita was advertised as the home console experience on-the-go, but most gamers who want those kinds of experiences don't want to play on portables anyway, and the Vita was generally not strong enough for ports to run as well as their home console counterparts (so they'd run at a lower resolution, or have a lower frame rate, or just not have as detailed graphics, etc.). This held true even with games that were on both Vita and PS3, let alone games that were on Vita and PS4. But when mainstream support dried up, it became a great system for smaller Japanese releases and Western indies. Third-party publishers like XSEED, Nippon Ichi, Aksys, and Idea Factory kept a steady stream of games coming, building up nice libraries of RPGs, visual novels, and other games targeting the "otaku" crowd, and the physical offerings from Limited Run Games and other such companies only scratch the surface of all the indies that are available.
Edit: Reading through this thread was interesting. I wonder how many people in this topic bought a Vita at launch and ended up disappointed because it didn't continue to receive the same kinds of games. The launch library versus the library the system got after it "failed" really is like night and day. And it's precisely why I wasn't interested in it at launch. I have almost no interest in AAA gaming, even less in mainstream Western gaming. If I remember correctly, I got my Vita for Christmas of 2013 (having specifically requested it). I became interested when I heard about what was coming out in Japan and when stuff like Danganronpa was getting localized. Even then, though, I barely touched my Vita for the first year I had it. It took a while for it to build up enough localized niche Japanese games to become a staple in my gaming. For several years now, it's been one of my most played systems.
It's funny seeing many people held off on the Vita waiting for hardware revisions. It was totally sound logic, considering how other handhelds went, but the original model is still the better of the two models, in my opinion. The OLED screen is just so much better. The second model had already been announced when I got mine, and that was another reason I wanted it then. I wanted an OLED model while they were still available brand-new. That's not to say there aren't some improvements with the second model (wish I could combine the OLED screen with the lighter weight of the second model), but they're not worth the screen downgrade. I felt similarly with the third model of the PSP. The second PSP model is an improvement over the first in just about every way (especially for ghosting and load times), but the switch to an interlaced screen for the third model, when the previous two weren't interlaced and thus games up to that point hadn't been designed with interlaced screens in mind, killed it for me.
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