it’s not a “nothing special” device, it literally has a psp encoded into the soc package…

It’s nothing special anymore today because current arm processors are fast enough to fully emulate PSP.

this is just flat out incorrect, a huge amount of games just don’t work on the vita tv because of the lack of touch interactions

Only a few dozen out of hundreds of vita titles, and mostly due to the lack of touchscreen, not the lack of the rear touchpad. Most vita titles that use the rear touchpad only use it as a workaround for the lack of R2/L2 buttons, which the portal has.