The general consensus on GAF is that the price of the Vita Memory cards are too high and its become a running joke that seems to have no end. But I don't think Sony are doing it on purpose because they are ignorant to people's pleas on this. It's just that the memory card price is tied to the hardware cost.
It seems Vita Memory Card prices are always compared to SD or micro SD card prices, which to be fair is obvious and a normal thing to do but the way Vita and memory is priced is more like devices that have internal memory like the iPhone. The difference is that Sony wanted to put out one Vita SKU and 4 memory cards SKUs, rather than 4 Vitas with different memory capacities.
Now here are the Vita Memory Card Prices I got from Amazon.
8GB: $28
16GB: $42
32GB: $58
64GB: $107
The price of the Vita on Amazon is $153. If you were to buy the system together with a memory card just like an iphone the costs would be -
8GB: $181
16GB: $195 (7% more than the Vita system + 8GB card)
32GB: $211 (16% more)
64GB: $260 (43% more)
Therefore I wonder whether people would still have an issue over the memory prices if the memory was internal on the Vita (ie Sony could just seal the door on a new Vita model update). It looks to me like they are trying to capture a wider market by offering the Vita and memory at a range of prices just like the iPhone. And each iPhone memory level is a $100 jump, but most people seem to have gotten over it.
Then there's the issue of whether the Vita is making money on the hardware itself which probably led to higher memory card prices. The true price of the Vita probably lies somewhere in the middle so that Sony can capture as wide a market as possible where some people can only afford the base model, but many others are happy to pay for more memory and can afford the higher tier card.
If you compare the 3DS and the Vita, its clear the Vita has better guts inside, yet the Vita was only a little bit more expensive when they launched, with the memory card being where Sony was going to make some of their money back on the hardware. By offering the Vita Memory card at higher prices for the higher tier cards, it offered a lower price of entry on the hardware itself.
So to sum up, obviously Sony bungled the marketing on this and probably should have gone with internal memory, with multiple Vita SKUs just like the home consoles. But can we as knowledgeable gamers at least understand where they are coming from? And if you haven't got a Vita yet, and are put off by the memory card price, the Vita + 32GB seems to be a nice sweet spot.