-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
The Vita Memory Card Price Criticism is Unfair
- Thread starter Jimrpg
- Start date
GhostTrick
Banned
Of course it's not fair. The only unfair thing is Vita's memory card price. That just mean the Vita low price was a psychological price. And that the device will remain terribly expensive in the end. A 128GB micro sd card is like 40 dollars. A 64GB vita card is 85 dollars. Twice more for twice less.
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
I never would have believed it before that I would actually see someone in GAF goes out of his way to defend the price of Vita's memory cards.
Never. And yet here we are...
Damn.
Never. And yet here we are...
Damn.
VendettaRed07
Member
Crazy to argue this given the state of the system
Most people didn't get a cheaper system because of this scheme
they got no system because they said fuck off Sony and opted not to buy one
Absolutely asinine thing to do considering what an uphill battle the vita had against it. Vita should have failed because of external factors not self inflicted anti consumer bullshit
Most people didn't get a cheaper system because of this scheme
they got no system because they said fuck off Sony and opted not to buy one
Absolutely asinine thing to do considering what an uphill battle the vita had against it. Vita should have failed because of external factors not self inflicted anti consumer bullshit
foolishoptimist
Member
A 64GB card costs the same as 2 full priced games(AU prices). It's not that much when you consider mine contains ~100 games.
The card price in comparison to my overall gaming spend is fractional. But if you haven't had PS+, and don't buy a lot of games, then that does change the value in the card.
Don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but to the OP: there was a Vita test model that leaked out that was using standard SD cards. Sony made a choice to make them proprietary to make more $$. End of story. ¯_(ツ_/¯
Knowing there was a test kit, doesn't tell you anything about Sony's motives.
Mass_Pincup
Banned
Nope, the memory cards aren't even a factor outside of hardcore gamer.
For it to be one you actually have to:
- be interested in the handheld
-prefer to buy digitally instead of physically
-buy enough games so that a big memory card is actually considered
The vast majority of the mass market can get by just fine with a 4GB or with the internal 2GB in the 2000.
NoFaceNico
Member
Saying your prices are similar to Apple's pricing model does not help your argument, it hurts it.
ArtHands
Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
"lower price of entry on the hardware itself" is just a nice way of saying "we hide the core hardware cost by jacking up the memory card price".
People will rather pay a higher one-time cost upfront, and use cheap sd card, so they can upgrade their capacity without financial worry. the fact that sd card can be use for other electronic gadgets helps too. If they have buyer remorse, they can easily sell the card away, or purchase second hand sd card very easily.
Sony recoup the hardware cost with the first memory card you purchased, but what about the second or third card? You are locked to buying from Sony with no cheaper third party alternatives. People are not stupid.
If embedding the storage to the hardware and the overall price tag doesn't look appealing, then be realistic and downgrade the specs.
People will rather pay a higher one-time cost upfront, and use cheap sd card, so they can upgrade their capacity without financial worry. the fact that sd card can be use for other electronic gadgets helps too. If they have buyer remorse, they can easily sell the card away, or purchase second hand sd card very easily.
Sony recoup the hardware cost with the first memory card you purchased, but what about the second or third card? You are locked to buying from Sony with no cheaper third party alternatives. People are not stupid.
If embedding the storage to the hardware and the overall price tag doesn't look appealing, then be realistic and downgrade the specs.
I think its more the fact that when you realize you are being heavily milked for cash, you don't want to give that hard earned cash to them.
Especially when there are other far cheaper options that Sony could have gone with.
old manatee
Banned
There sure are a lot of benefits for the consumer when they use a weird proprietary memory card format, and it costs way more than the 15 or so high-speed, high-capacity memory cards I already own. I'm being sarcastic.
My Vita's 4gb card is the main reason that I only break it out once or twice a year.
My Vita's 4gb card is the main reason that I only break it out once or twice a year.
Rodney McKay
Member
While it wasn't the biggest reason I didn't get a Vita for years (the lack of games I wanted to play was), the memory card prices were definitely something that kept me away for a lot longer than I would have normally.
Thankfully when I did buy the Vita I got a great condition used one with a 16gb card for a good price, and I managed to get an extra 32gb card on sale, miraculously enough.
A 64gb would have been ideal, and I'd have been able to fit everything I own on it at the same time, but EVEN NOW they are still around $100. I just bought a 128gb SD card for my phone for about 1/3 of that cost, and since SD cards are usable in other devices, I can use my old 64gb card in my little Windows tablet.
Thankfully when I did buy the Vita I got a great condition used one with a 16gb card for a good price, and I managed to get an extra 32gb card on sale, miraculously enough.
A 64gb would have been ideal, and I'd have been able to fit everything I own on it at the same time, but EVEN NOW they are still around $100. I just bought a 128gb SD card for my phone for about 1/3 of that cost, and since SD cards are usable in other devices, I can use my old 64gb card in my little Windows tablet.
KojiKnight
Member
mmc cards (confirmed by recent hack/dump attempts) but yeah...
Conkerkid11
Member
Were you going to go into the the specs of these proprietary cards vs standard cards that aren't marked up, or did you discover that there werent any differences and that's why you went the direction of the iPhone comparison?
You are aware of Android devices which allow you to expand memory with standard SD, right?
You are aware of Android devices which allow you to expand memory with standard SD, right?
//ARCANUM
Member
True. I don't know that for sure. But we know that Vita did work with standard SD. Sony made a choice for proprietary. I'd bet money on their reason for that being the ability to price gouge on memory cards. It did not pay off for them.
(And for the record I have a Vita and love it.)
wowbaggerBR
Member
The memory card price held me back from buying and playing a ton of Vita games for years, that's right, years. Sorry OP, but the world doesn't revolves around the US market.
foolishoptimist
Member
Sony didn't just use a proprietary card though they had several pre-existing options.
They chose a Vita only format.
They also force you to use the Content Manager Assistant to move anything onto or off the device. This is a lot more work on their part than making it show up as a USB drive.
They're limiting your ability to put any unauthorized files onto the device. Like what you needed to do to hack your psp.
There were other formats(ProDuo) that could have made them money.
Only one option would help them lock down the system from pirates for(even longer than the PS3 took to hack).
Consider how few Vita's are being sold, and how small the numbers must be for each size of Vita card that Sony are producing, compared to other card formats, and I wouldn't be
surprised if Sony weren't making much money at all on the actual cards. The system software certainly isn't built to allow me to easily swap cards which might encourage me to buy even more, as my 64GB is full.
I'd buy a 128GB in a heartbeat, if they ever made one.
chillybright
Banned
It doesn't really matter whether the criticism is unfair or not. The market has spoken and price factor played an important role.
Perception is everything. Regardless of how much money it actually makes them, when you see a Micro SD and a Vita memory card and the Vita memory card is far more expensive, that doesn't look good.
foolishoptimist
Member
Perception is a matter of choice though.
We don't know what margin Sony is making, could be 0%, 50%, -20%.
You can choose to look at it next to the price of other similar memory that doesn't work in a Vita if you want to.
You might consider that, at system purchase, it reduces the number of games you can buy with it - fair enough, but how long would that be a factor?...
I consider that my 64GB card costs ~$1 per game stored on it. And I own more than I can fit on the thing, so a 128GB card would be an instant buy for me.
But, due to Sony's OS setup, a second card of any size for some more games isn't worth it, because it screws up the game organization.
donutzsick
Member
lol so many people completely ignored the OP....
Interesting way to look at things. I never thought about it like that... i would be very fascinated with a universe where vita launched at 300$ and allowed sd/micro sd...
Interesting way to look at things. I never thought about it like that... i would be very fascinated with a universe where vita launched at 300$ and allowed sd/micro sd...
TheBaldEmperor
Member
I didn't do my homework before I grabbed one of those on clearance. Blew my mind when I looked at the cost of a decent sized card. I never opened it after that. Sold it for what I paid for it and never looked back. Too bad.
The Xbox 360 used proprietary storage and never seemed to get much flak for it (on the contrary, it was the people buying the cheaper system who were called retards). The most popular devices of all time (the Apple portables) use an even worse form of proprietary storage - non user upgradable.
It's easy to see how Sony thought they could get away with it. Of course, it turns out selling a 32Gb proprietary card that looks the same as a 32Gb microSD card for 2, 3 times more money is something people quickly caught up on, if message boards are any indication.
A $300 Vita with microSD would've been just as bad as what we got imo, but I wonder how the Apple model would've done (8Gb model at $199, 16Gb at $299 and 32Gb at $399).
It's easy to see how Sony thought they could get away with it. Of course, it turns out selling a 32Gb proprietary card that looks the same as a 32Gb microSD card for 2, 3 times more money is something people quickly caught up on, if message boards are any indication.
A $300 Vita with microSD would've been just as bad as what we got imo, but I wonder how the Apple model would've done (8Gb model at $199, 16Gb at $299 and 32Gb at $399).
I mean, the argument ended right there, on the first page.
I have a Vita and a handful of 4, 8, 16 cards and one 32 GB card but it's absolutely absurd that I can't use a micro SD card on my Vita. Sony's proprietary format holds no advantages over micro SD and any hope of increased security went out the door when they allowed people to download Vita games to PS3's to transfer.
Agent Unknown
Member
It was bad enough they went with their own memory cards with the Memory Pro Duo sticks on PSP, but then when loyal PSP owners had actually gotten acclimated and used to that format after the PSP's success they doubled down, greedily hit the reset button again and went with yet another brand new memory format with Vita and priced them sky high. Aside from Sony's mishandling of the system over time, dedicated portables vs mobile, ect., ditching Memory Pro Duo and lack of proper BC are two major reasons Vita failed out of the gate. So yeah, the hate on Vita memory card cost is justified.
In my opinion, a mixture of no games, a high price of entry (which the memory cards contributed to) and the collapse of the handheld market thanks to phone gaming.
It might have done better with cheaper memory cards, but I doubt it would have saved it from its fate.
foolishoptimist
Member
Vita resisted being hacked until basically 1-2 months ago.
It lasted longer than the PS3. And the PS3 had to be stripped apart to be hacked initially.
Lokimaru
Member
Last time Sony let people use a none proprietary format on PSP hackers used it to fuck them with piracy, oh wait i'm sorry "homebrew" piracy's hipster cousin. They trusted people and people fucked them. I'm not surprised they went back to a proprietary format. If you leave your front door open and someone robs you, you learn to lock the fucking door.
maybe because there are not enough games, so no one bothered to hack it?
Quote
Member
The PSP used proprietary memory sticks. It was also not the cause of home-brew, the proprietary battery and games were.
Dangansona
Member
I mean the prices on those things sucked, but I think the unfair - or rather inaccurate - part is the narrative that the Vita failed because of memory cards. I find it very hard to believe that outside of a vocal minority of hardcore gamers that the people who were already sold on a Vita decided to pass due to memory cards of which you could get for less than a cost of a console game or controller.
super-famicom
Member
Man, there's a defense force for everything on GAF...
So you're suggesting that users should have to pay significantly above the going rate for memory because it's Sony's DRM?
They could have sold a proprietary format at prices similar to (or hell, even no more than twice as much) as the industry standard, and people wouldn't care so much.
Your explanation is a good argument in favour of a proprietary format. It does not explain why Sony price their memory cards like a high margin accessory.
EventHorizon
Member
All I can say is that I looked at those memory card prices and 'noped' right out of there. The market has spoken, the expensive memory cards were a very bad idea. If they ever do something like that again they can expect similar results.
KojiKnight
Member
Yeah that's why they totally locked down the ps3 and ps4 so they can't use off the shelf hard drives and usb sticks.... Oh wait...
Kagoshima_Luke
Gold Member
This might sound arrogant, but i didn't even bother reading the thread because there is literally no reason for anyone in their right minds to defend Sony for this. When i can purchase a 64gb micro sd for almost 1/5 the price of a 64gb vita card, you know something is not right.
SolidSnakeUS
Member
Allow SD cards and this problem would be completely solved. Hell, I can see the Vita selling a lot more if it actually used SD cards.
First post gets it.
You also can't forget that internal memory would have been blazing fast compared to a memory card, so saying they're doing us a favor by offering the cards as quasi SKUs is utter nonsense. What you're describing is inferior and convoluted.
I myself would have never bought a Vita with its ridiculous and shitty pricing scheme if not for a fellow Gaffer in BST selling his unit, a 64GB card and a ton of games for a pretty low price. Sony basically lost a direct sale for handling the Vita so terribly.
Gunslinger
Member
This whole thread seems like a bait thread to me. But if TC is serious then well....uh....i guess he is entitled to his opinion. Even though sony straight up got greedy and overpriced memory card price probably one of the main reason the system failed miserably when compared to the king(3ds)of handheld gaming consoles(not counting cellphones).