I'm shocked that nobody's talking about this,
Why should we? It was kinda obvious when the PSP became piracy haven and the PS Vita flopped equal or harder than the Wii U, even against the 3DS, that had a rocky start due to it being overpriced. Plus the way Sony answered question about a Vita successor, and how they praised the Switch, it was kinda obvious they were just maintaining their investors on the edge up until they could make the final decision of leaving the handheld market to Nintendo.
This is genuinely disappointing.
To be honest, there is nothing Sony could have brought to the table besides either a PS Vita 2, or a Switch knock-off. So I'm kinda relieved they didn't decide to waste money, seeing as how Sony isn't even in the best position right now to make financial blunders. Sure, their gaming/entertainment department is doing alright, but the corporation's other departments aren't. Again, the least they'd need now is another flop like the Vita was.
nobody hated Sony's hardware,
Devs did. The Vita was too ahead of its time and the development costs were basically on-par or equal to that of home console projects. The Vita's sole reason of failure wasn't the marketing.
Nintendo having a monopoly in the handheld gaming market gives them a reason to raise prices, that's bad for us.
Nintendo isn't even in the home or portable department. Read about the "Blue Ocean Shift Strategy". Nintendo is occupying both the home and handheld markets. Sony dominates home, so they can't have that much of a slice from the home market; mobile gaming dominates the handheld department, so Nintendo can't risk it all there. What can you do? Simple: merge both of your home and handheld development departments and you get success. The Switch is performing on-par with the Wii, which was a phenomena back then.
And this about Nintendo raising prices isn't going to happen. There's an agreed upon market cap of games not costing beyond $59.99. This all sounds like the hysteria concerning Net Neutrality.