Quizzed by a fan on whether the PlayStation Vita could ever get a successor, the likeable suit told a packed panel that while his team has enjoyed working on the system, the mobile sector is a different beast these days.

During an appearance today at Europe’s EGX gaming event, PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida made comments that suggest a successor to the PlayStation Vita may not be in the cards.

As for the Vita, it’s only a matter of time. While holding fair sales in their domestic market of Japan, the Vita just never caught on with the same fire that its predecessor, the PSP, did worldwide. Sony is seeing massive success with their PlayStation 4, despite the track records with Vita and PlayStation TV so whatever comes next will be nothing if not interesting.

“People have mobile phones and it’s so easy to play games on smartphones”, said Yoshida, adding “many games on smartphones are free, or free to start” in contrast with more expensive Vita titles. Therefore, occasional touch-based mini-games shouldn’t be a big concern. So one thing we do for virtual reality is we want to make our games work really well there, so we have to drive them at a very, very high framerate. This year, mobile gaming revenues are expected to overtake that of console games, with titles like Clash of Clans, Angry Birds 2, and even the new game from pop singer Demi Lovato making bank from microtransactions.

All you need to do is only send PlayStation TV a message from your email app with the writer.eml file attached (a download link can be found on the source’s website) and rename it as #0 without an extension.

In case you hadn’t already guessed, Sony is unlikely to make another dedicated gaming handheld.