And if we want to get extravagant, the 200GB MicoSD card from your link is $79 which is still cheaper than that 64GB Vita memory card.
For some reason, I feel the 3DS with SD cards is a way better deal. I will bet Poke-Bucks that if Vita used SDXC micro cards it would have SOLD like 10x better.
Damn OP. I came here expecting to read your post and say "no one is more obsessed with their Vita than I am, but they messed up the memory cards, disagree."
Then I read what you had to say and you're looking at a convert, of a sort.
I still think it was "a failure" because the market tolerated it poorly (that may have been down to marketing, in general) but you've successfully illustrated the answer to the long standing mystery at the heart of all this. The question of "what were they thinking?"
You, OP, have pretty clearly made a logical case for their rationale, and you know, I think you're right, people have been a somewhat unfair. Then again, that's what people do.
I dont think you get it. We know the high memory card is to offset the low hardware cost, and we know this is where Sony is coming from. And that's why we didn't get fooled by Sony.
people don't want to get locked into buying Sony's expensive and proprietary card when they want to upgrade the storage thereafter. $200 vita with microsd card is the obvious better choice
People "accept" Apple's insane prices because they have a good product that people will just suck up and pay. The complaints are there every generation still and the endless comparisons to Android phones that have microSD slots
Why not?
SD Card prices:
8gb: $6
16gb: $9
32gb: $21
64gb: $31
It looked really scummy: Buy the Vita for XXX! (oh yeah and you also have to pay extra bucks for our expensive memory cards).
I can imagine the rage I´d have felt if I´d bought a Vita not knowing about memory cards and later found I had to get one. It wasn´t a way to make the console cheaper, it was a way to split the cost in separate items to try to trick the consumer into thinking the price of the console was cheaper than it really was. And it was also a way to cash in more money from people who bought more than 1 memory card. People saw through it and that helped Vita get the sales it currently has. You can trick some people, but sooner or later (thanks to internet more sooner than later) the truth will be exposed and your strategy will give you more harm than good.
If your device costs XXX and that turns out to be too far from your desired price you shouldn´t try to trick the customer into paying XXX, instead you should go back to the design board and downgrade until you get a product that can be sold without using scummy tactics.
They saved you money.
PS Vita was and is an awesome product, memory card disputed point aside, so ?
PS Vita was and is an awesome product, memory card disputed point aside, so ?
Yup, this system does not age well.They chose to eschew SD cards which are both faster and cheaper. That's on them. Consumers might still choose to buy a Vita, but should not be running damage control for Sony's poor decisions which are ultimately anti-consumer.
There are no advantages of Vita memory cards over Micro SD cards. The prices 3-5 times higher, the speeds are much lower, and they're harder to find.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-how-fast-are-vita-memory-cards
This is a terrible post. First you are comparing flash memory which is pretty slow to according to a tests from anandtech, best in the cellphone industry iPhone memory. Their prices are overpriced but you're comparing apples to snails, and their pricing scheme is in line with other cell phone makers. Sony sold their cards for more than 1 dollar per gig, when a micro SD goes for 50 cents per gb for some of the higher end cards.it was a cash grab.
Yeah that could´ve been a nice solution, though then the base price of the console would´ve been higher.I honestly think that with 1-2 GB of onboard ganes accessible flash storage built in the base model they could have avoided all of this controversy and still pushed external memory cards.
People who buy physical games would have no hidden cost, it would be enough memory to save for all your games, and you could still download some small games from the store.
You put it in words much better than I did.Until you had to buy a memory card...
I don't understand your "Sony was really looking out for you" perspective. They saved themselves money by not having to put internal storage, really.
Let's not be delusional here it was a business decision to get to a more attractive price point, however, it wasn't the true cost of the system and that's where the problem is with a lot of people, myself included.
Until you had to buy a memory card...
I don't understand your "Sony was really looking out for you" perspective. They saved themselves money by not having to put internal storage, really.
Let's not be delusional here it was a business decision to get to a more attractive price point, however, it wasn't the true cost of the system and that's where the problem is with a lot of people, myself included.
/threadNo it's not.
Yes because of the proprietary memory cards on Vita, it's received great first party support.
You are wrong. Had they used an industry standard memory card format, the increase in user-base would have more than outweighed any loss of software sales from piracy.
There was a big drop around 2008 and another big drop in 2010. There was also a big skew towards Japanese releases only also. As far as Western developers went, it dropped off very quickly. Of course, those drops could well have more do do with the rise of the App store. But I worked at a game dev at the time, and it was perceived that that was the cause, and the reason we did not release the sequel to a successful PSP game on that platform.That's just not true. First, because PSP was selling software no less than the Gameboy line. And then because the PSP sufferred just a short period of drain 2008...outside of that, the support has been crazy until 2011
Until you had to buy a memory card...
I don't understand your "Sony was really looking out for you" perspective. They saved themselves money by not having to put internal storage, really.
Let's not be delusional here it was a business decision to get to a more attractive price point, however, it wasn't the true cost of the system and that's where the problem is with a lot of people, myself included.
Nah, I'd say criticism is 100% justified for the many reasons already stated in this thread. Especially if you were one of those people that screwed over by Sony removing multi-account support in one of the early updates.
But you can buy a 8GB card if you don't want to buy the 32GB/64GB version (with the increased margins).
So we agree on the bolded!
Proprietary cards are bullshit. Sony had so much paranoia after the PSP that they decided to punish their next generation of customers and make a tidy extra profit while they were at it.
Stop making excuses for their shitty mistakes.
This was a key problem, why not let people use a cheap, large SD card and make the money by having them fill it up with games? Standard Vita games fill out a modest memory card in no time at all.Sony forgot that games were several GB's not a couple mb each like songs. Memory that expensive hindered people buying more games.
There's no argument that its nice that you get to choose how much memory you want, just like any SD card. Sure you can buy an 8gb because that 32 is too much, but if it was SD, your choice would be should I get this 16 or 128gb card. And that's the problem.
If we agree they why are you saying criticism is unfair?
Why defend this? Even the Vita fans are not defending this.
Because I believe that regardless of whether they used proprietary memory cards or SD cards, they would have charged the same amount and gotten the same money per customer. Its just that the margin is on the memory card and not on the system and that's why it looks bad.
Of course that logic could be used on absolutely anything, like the water in this restaurant is $10 but the food is real cheap. But that doesn't get as much flack as Vita memory cards.
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.
Digital Foundry said:In comparison to microSDs out there, we see the Vita cards operating at the equivalent of Class 2 to Class 6, depending on what kind of mood you catch it in (the class system is defined by write speeds). Read times are not really covered by the SD Class system, but in our experience they're either the same or quite a bit better - flash memory in general tends to be more challenged when it comes to writing data as opposed to reading it back.
The Vita cards seem to max out at somewhere in-between 6MB/s to 8MB/s, generally speaking - quite a large delta. At the time of writing, a 16GB Vita card costs around £40 while a Class 10 MicroSD with a reputable brand, offering the same storage, can be purchased from Amazon for as little as £10.
OP's theory would make a little sense if Sony ever sold various console packs with 16, 32, 64 GB cards included. The reality was that everybody had a 4 or 8 GB card included and had to buy another one on the side to make it confortable.
107usd for a 64gb card
LAMO
Sony has always had overpriced memory cards. Starting with the PSone, the PS2 and then the Vita. It's nothing new. Like nearly all peripherals, they pretty much never get a decent price cut even towards the end of the consoles lifespan.
I'm still waiting for half price or less (official) DS3 controllers
You can't compare the two models of offering storage because they work in fundamentally different ways, which is pretty much why people perceive them differently.
The iPhone, and iOS, is built around buying really speedy onboard storage as part of the device, and there are free, ample, cloud storage options for basically everything you might do on the device if you need them.
PS Vita puts the cost of all onboard storage on the consumer, but instead of giving the consumer best-in-class storage speeds and alternatives that make that storage less of a problem, owners are saddled with terrible read/write speeds (~7MB/s read speeds ~6MB/s write speeds), which hamper game load times, and poorly thought-out data management options (deleting a game deletes its save, games often have large patches which operate on top of the initial game file, cloud storage is locked behind a paid subscription).
Because PS Vita storage is comparable to devices that support expandable storage, I think it's absolutely fair that it's scrutinised under the same means. Moreso given how it's mandatory to the device, and not just an extra.
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So I don't think you can compare expandable storage to say, the iPhone's internal storage, which was up to 18x as fast as Vita memory cards four years ago, and is in a completely different league today.
The Vita cards aren't very good technically (and worse now), so if you look at the cards by themselves with that price tag of course its going to look bad.
Most people buy a system together with a memory card so they should be looked at together.
They had those mega value memory card packs with 5 games and a memory card for the price of a game.
That was good value.
But they didn't sell the memory inside the console I guess to offer more flexibility at retail in terms of stock. Much easier to move one Vita SKU and memory cards than multiple Vita SKUs.
Of course that logic could be used on absolutely anything, like the water in this restaurant is $10 but the food is real cheap. But that doesn't get as much flack as Vita memory cards.