In my mind it's in a much worse position than that. Sega at least managed to make the system desirable to over 10 million people by releasing good, exclusive games on it. The Vita does not win on any angle right now. If you want little mini game downloads, most of us have a smart phone for that, if you want to play core or awesome games? Somehow, the 3ds has managed to best the Vita even there. Resident evil, Super mario land 3d, mario kart, luigis mansion, mario tennis, paper mario, new mario bros 2, kid icarus, download games like pushmo, virtual console portable, etc, all manage to fulfill gaming needs the vita is not.
Kid icarus was the first step in me selling my Vita, as much as the Vita hardware absolutely pisses on the 3ds (god is it beautiful), that game made me realize something, the Vita will likely never have a game this interesting, big, or unique. Oddly, the game would work BETTER on the vita than it did on the 3ds from a control perspective. Instead, Vita has a decent looking gravity rush, and uncharted golden abyss? Games like wipeout, hot shots, and a bunch of ports don't exactly make people rush out and buy your platform.
Unfortunately, uncharted is probably the only reason the system even saw signs of life in the US, right now the Vita has to compete with an onslaught from Nintendo in retail, and an even bigger onslaught from phone competitors like google and apple on the download space. However, sony has shown its platform is a weird mutant, potentially amazing at everything, but even the company that output the device has shown almost no future support for it in games. Does sony have one announced Vita exclusive hitting retail in 2012 from here on? It's the first parties job to either make the games, or buy out the support to show what your system can do. It's not in other companies best interest to splinter the market more and more, it's sonys job to powerhouse their system. Instead they lose games like monster hunter and don't bother pressing for games like resident evil, while replacing them with.. nothing. The vita launch is almost identical to the psp launch, but this time the PS brand is hardly as relevant and the future support much more bleak, as well as far harder competition.