I absolutely adore my PlayStation Vita. It’s the handheld I’ve always wanted, and I play it pretty much every day. From Persona 4 Golden, Dokuro and LittleBigPlanet to Escape Plan, Tales From Space and Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Vita has plenty of great games that have kept me (and will continue to keep me) busy nearly a year into its lifecycle. In fact, some may argue that we’re now inundated with Vita offerings, especially for late adopters just jumping into the experience. (That is, of course, an issue very much in dispute.)

“ Like it or not, shooters are the real money-maker in today’s industry...

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“ Unit 13 absolutely nails the 10-minute gaming session.

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“ Burning Skies is a vapid, sterile shooter with no heart.

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“ ...I can pretty much guarantee you that you'll never see Call of Duty ever again on PlayStation Vita.

The Vita is also exceptionally powerful. In many ways it’s just another PlayStation 3. The two share saves and other data, and can even play seamlessly between the two systems, as PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale has proven. It has a huge strata of games to choose from in terms of price, too, ranging from cheap Minis to affordable tailor-made Vita games to the more expensive console-quality attempts we were promised would be the hallmark of the system.But there’s something missing with PlayStation Vita: great first-person shooters that best take advantage of Vita’s dual analog sticks. For a handheld promising “console quality on the go” in advertisements, it’s a huge miss, and an even bigger miss for the millions upon millions of gamers who dominate the shooter scene and would absolutely adore a handheld that gave them their favorite genre no matter where they are. Like it or not, shooters are the real money-maker in today’s industry – Call of Duty illustrates this year in and year out – and if there’s nothing compelling on your platform hailing from that genre, it will be relegated to a niche in the west (unless, of course, you’re Nintendo).When Sony Bend – the capable and woefully underused Sony-owned studio behind the Syphon Filter franchise – was tasked with taking Naughty Dog’s seminal series and doing something with it, they delivered. Sure, they might have gotten a little out of control with some of the wonky Vita functionality (Holding your handheld up to a light, anyone?), but Sony Bend nailed what they set out to do: create a console quality game that, frankly, was better in many respects than Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Moreover, some of Bend’s initiatives, such as a fleshed-out treasure system that really made you feel the part of Nathan Drake, is something Uncharted’s native developer can learn from.Unit 13, on the other hand, isn’t a console quality game per se, and it’s not what you probably expected from Zipper Interactive. It’s not another SOCOM or MAG, but rather something separate. Much like Sony Bend understood an important part of Vita’s intended philosophy – the need for console-quality games – Zipper Interactive took advantage of another key pillar of Vita’s could-be success: bite-sized gaming that borrows from larger, more fleshed-out offerings. Unit 13 absolutely nails the 10-minute gaming session. It’s easy to pick up, put down, and pick back up again with no context needed. There’s no narrative to miss and no characters to understand. There are simply stages to unlock, stars to earn, experience points to gain and Trophies to gather. Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified – both created by the same studio and both suffering from significant problems. While those two games (and especially the latter) could have been killer apps on PlayStation Vita, we’re instead left waiting for the first truly great mobile FPS. Unfortunately, these two games don’t only represent missed opportunities in their own right, but could serve as cautionary tales to other developers who may want to give it a go. The latter point is truly a shame.Resistance: Burning Skies completely ignores what made the PS3 trilogy great: story, ambience and characters. It’s a capable shooter with fine mechanics for what is, in essence, a maiden foray of the genre on Vita. But while gameplay is king, Resistance's solid gameplay didn't help it stand apart from, say, Killzone. What has made the Resistance brand stand out is everything surrounding the gameplay. Insomniac Games expertly crafted a compelling alternate history to place Resistance in, but Nihilistic Software paid no attention to it. Look at New York City in Resistance 3, and then look at New York City in Resistance: Burning Skies. One was crafted with love; the other crafted with haste. One is vibrant; the other is bland.Burning Skies is a vapid, sterile shooter with no heart. It’s hard to care about characters you barely know. It’s hard to explore environments that seem to be wantonly grafted together. And it’s especially hard to have any fear of the Chimera when the AI is programmed so poorly. I’d argue Burning Skies helped permanently kill the Resistance franchise , a true shame considering it’s been proven that another studio can do Resistance justice. Just ask Sony Bend about Resistance: Retribution on PSP.However, the first-person shooter genre on PlayStation Vita hit a brick wall with the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified. It was as obvious as the day is long that Black Ops Declassified was going to be a dud; all you have to do is put together the puzzle pieces as I did back in August . We never saw a screenshot of the game until a few months before it came out. We didn’t play it until a few months before it came out. We didn’t even know who was developing it until a few months before it came out. The reasons why are woefully clear, so there’s little need to delve any deeper.And that’s the biggest problem of all, because short-term gains are going to create bigger problems for Vita down the road. Activision's and Sony’s handling of Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified shows a rather strange indifference to quality, a trend that has persisted via a smorgasbord of third parties on multiple handhelds throughout the years, and one that Sony could have summarily squashed with this game in particular. So why shouldn’t we expect this unsettling trend to continue in the future? After all, holding Black Ops Declassified for six months to actually let Nihilistic finish the game would have forced Sony to miss the holiday season, but wouldn't we -- as gamers and consumers -- ultimately been better off? We'd have gotten a better product and maybe even another Call of Duty game down the line to help push more Vitas in the coming years. But I can pretty much guarantee you that you'll never see Call of Duty ever again on PlayStation Vita.Call of Duty is the biggest franchise in gaming right now, period. It built its following – which grows every year – through an insistence on being great. Like EA with Madden and FIFA on Vita, Sony and Activision chose to ignore that, instead hastily throwing something together using a developer that’s either out of its league with big game production or, more likely, wasn’t given the time and resources to finish each of its projects. And that means Vita is officially in a catch-22, caught between subpar games that weren’t given time to develop while trying to sell games in the future that now won’t sell because the original offering wasn’t up to snuff. And what’s really strange is that Sony and Activision decided to put themselves into this position together, hand-in-hand, though it's a situation that, ultimately, will only wear on Sony. nearly two years before the game came out .That’s insane. Apart from the fact that the game was seemingly announced over a year before anyone actually started making it, no console quality game can be made in such a short time. Consider that the console Call of Duty games now have two-year development cycles with hundreds of people from multiple studios working on them. Doesn’t a Call of Duty iteration on Vita deserve even a modicum of that same love and attention?The lessons from analyzing these four shooters are clear. Sony can rely on its own studios to make solid Vita games, and it can’t, so far, count on anyone else. After all, the tale doesn’t end with Nihilistic Software (which recently changed its name and got out of traditional development after creating two poor Vita titles); it begins with the next studio that decides to pick up the mantle. But there’s only one shooter known to be in development for Vita: Killzone: Mercenary, under development at another Sony-owned studio, Guerilla Games. Gearbox wants to bring its seminal shooter-RPG Borderlands 2 to the Vita , but it can’t afford to do it on its own. And yes, BioShock Vita was announced well over a year ago, but will it ever actually exist considering the handheld's struggle to get into the hands of eager gamers?What’s missing is the proof that other studios can replicate the commercial and critical success of Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Unit 13 – however limited – so that others will begin bringing their much-needed games to the platform. With more time, energy and love, both Resistance: Burning Skies and Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified could have been those games. But instead, I fear they are both a warning about half-hearted gaming development generally, and Vita development specifically.Vita needs the first-person shooter genre to survive. The question is, who now will step up to the plate and deliver it?

Colin Moriarty is an IGN PlayStation editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.