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The Vita Memory Card Price Criticism is Unfair
- Thread starter Jimrpg
- Start date
Sorcerer Supreme
Member
i cant believe someone actually made this thread
Zxrophantom
Member
I would have to disagree with you on this one. I get what Sony was trying to do, release a powerhouse system at a marketable price then make up the cost hit on the accessories and games. As to your point, i don't think its fair to compare the vita to the iphone. The iphone and many new phones in general get a lot more stock given its also looked at as a needed item for living. So smart phones get away with a lot more and can be useful for many different thing aside from gaming. A gaming system that is looked at as a past time hobby is not going to have the same clout as a phone.
I would say that if there is already an example set people will be a lot more willing to go along with it. Many phones and computers have been set up with internal memory options. Speaking of which many sd and micro memory cards were already set so low in price that any savvy shopper would realize the price disparity. So you already have people who are not going to spend that kind of money on principle alone. Many others will see how much the system cost and won't spend the money on the memory card and in turn won't be driven to buy a lot of games given the amount of memory they have. That is a problem when even your hardcore gaming base is reluctant to drop the money on memory cards.
Releasing different models with internal memory may have solved the problem but not if it increased the cost of the system. Sony often times over does it when it comes to throwing cool tech at things and charging premium price for it. You could argue that they could have left out a few of the less useful tech like the back touch pad and got the price down that way. In turn make the memory cards mirror the standard prices set by the market. If games are the life blood of a hand held system you don't slow people down in how many games they can put on the system. It kind of goes double for Sony given they already had a great digital library set up with cross buy feature.
I would say that if there is already an example set people will be a lot more willing to go along with it. Many phones and computers have been set up with internal memory options. Speaking of which many sd and micro memory cards were already set so low in price that any savvy shopper would realize the price disparity. So you already have people who are not going to spend that kind of money on principle alone. Many others will see how much the system cost and won't spend the money on the memory card and in turn won't be driven to buy a lot of games given the amount of memory they have. That is a problem when even your hardcore gaming base is reluctant to drop the money on memory cards.
Releasing different models with internal memory may have solved the problem but not if it increased the cost of the system. Sony often times over does it when it comes to throwing cool tech at things and charging premium price for it. You could argue that they could have left out a few of the less useful tech like the back touch pad and got the price down that way. In turn make the memory cards mirror the standard prices set by the market. If games are the life blood of a hand held system you don't slow people down in how many games they can put on the system. It kind of goes double for Sony given they already had a great digital library set up with cross buy feature.
They wouldn't even need to take a memory card to the register. You could have picked up one of the CoD/AssCreed bundles that came with a 8GB and a handful of physical games and you would have been able to enjoy all of them with space to spare.
The mentality that you need 32 or 64GB of on board memory to enjoy a Vita doesn't exist in the real world.
Maiden Voyage
Gold™ Member
The Vita has become almost useless to me due to the high price of the memory cards. I buy most games digitally. When I do happen to buy a Vita game, I tend to buy used. So Sony lost money by not charging enough for the hardware, they lost money because I won't buy a memory card, and they continually lose money when I do decide to buy games. It is absolutely backward. It's a good piece of hardware, but they way they chose to support it makes zero sense.
Shin Johnpv
Member
AssCreed bundle only came with a 4gig card not an 8 gig. I know as that is the bundle I got. Also 4 gigs doesn't last very long when some games have pretty big updates that have to be saved to a card since there is no internal storage. If you want to be able to leave all of your game's updates installed then yeah you do need a larger card or onboard storage. Or even if you're into downloading games instead of buying physical.
If you're someone that owns a fair amount of games for the system and don't want to play the empty the fridge game then a 4gig, and possibly even an 8 gig card aren't really going to cut it.
*edit* and looking it up the Call of Duty bundle also only came with a 4 gig card. Neither bundle is going to give you enough storage space to have a handful of physical games and their updates on it.
e- removed the first bit cause I don't want to pile on the OP
There really is no justification for locking something as important as storage space behind incredibly expensive proprietary memory cards in an age where you can buy every new game release digitally along with a ton of digital re-releases of old games.
IMO Sony probably lost quite a bit of customers because of the memory card debacle.
There really is no justification for locking something as important as storage space behind incredibly expensive proprietary memory cards in an age where you can buy every new game release digitally along with a ton of digital re-releases of old games.
IMO Sony probably lost quite a bit of customers because of the memory card debacle.
Mr Fahrenheit
Member
What's unfair about it? They could have allowed any micro/SD but instead of that they made their own special cards for no reason, then instead of pricing them close to similar products to give an illusion of not being greedy they marked up the price exponentially because they're the only ones making them so no one has a choice. It's a bad cash grab at every angle you look at it.
Robert at Zeboyd Games
Banned
I think the idea that vita memory cards killed the system is ridiculous. The memory cards are a symptom, not a cause.
What do you compete against in the portable gaming market?
1) Price
2) Library
3) Power
Price - The Vita was more expensive than the 3DS (since Nintendo did a major price drop right after the Vita's price announcement) and that difference grew over time as Nintendo made cheaper models like the 2DS. And the Vita felt more expensive than smartphones since they hide their true prices with subscription plans & subsidize game prices with in-app purchases.
Library - Sony lost their big portable franchise when Capcom decided to move Monster Hunter to the 3DS. They made a few attempts at creating new franchise on the system (Gravity Rush, Tearaway, Freedom Wars, and Soul Sacrifice to name the big ones) but although Freedom Wars & Soul Sacrifice did decently in Japan, none of their new series really took off worldwide. And their portable installments of home console series generally had issues (Uncharted Vita was a worse Uncharted 1 that came out 3 months after the PS3 got Uncharted 3, Wipeout Vita was a great game dragged down by long load times, Killzone Mercs was good but too little, too late).
Power - The Vita stomps all over the 3DS (and the n3DS) in power and was decent at the time against mobile, but with mobile platforms getting yearly replacements, it was quickly left in the dust.
So what you've got is a platform that sits awkwardly between the 3DS and mobile, that seems more expensive than both, while not being more powerful than mobile, and with a library that lacks the sheer volume of mobile or the heavy-hitting name recognition of the 3DS's combination of Pokemon, Monster Hunter, and long-running Nintendo series. The Vita was set up to be a niche system and lowering the memory card prices wouldn't have fixed any of their obstacles towards mainstream success. If anything, you could argue that the memory cards helped salvage the system as they made it very difficult to pirate games which help result in the system having one of the highest paid attach rates ever. Yeah, not many people bought the Vita, but if your game budget isn't too high, you have a decent shot of selling enough copies to make a profit to the people who did buy the system.
What do you compete against in the portable gaming market?
1) Price
2) Library
3) Power
Price - The Vita was more expensive than the 3DS (since Nintendo did a major price drop right after the Vita's price announcement) and that difference grew over time as Nintendo made cheaper models like the 2DS. And the Vita felt more expensive than smartphones since they hide their true prices with subscription plans & subsidize game prices with in-app purchases.
Library - Sony lost their big portable franchise when Capcom decided to move Monster Hunter to the 3DS. They made a few attempts at creating new franchise on the system (Gravity Rush, Tearaway, Freedom Wars, and Soul Sacrifice to name the big ones) but although Freedom Wars & Soul Sacrifice did decently in Japan, none of their new series really took off worldwide. And their portable installments of home console series generally had issues (Uncharted Vita was a worse Uncharted 1 that came out 3 months after the PS3 got Uncharted 3, Wipeout Vita was a great game dragged down by long load times, Killzone Mercs was good but too little, too late).
Power - The Vita stomps all over the 3DS (and the n3DS) in power and was decent at the time against mobile, but with mobile platforms getting yearly replacements, it was quickly left in the dust.
So what you've got is a platform that sits awkwardly between the 3DS and mobile, that seems more expensive than both, while not being more powerful than mobile, and with a library that lacks the sheer volume of mobile or the heavy-hitting name recognition of the 3DS's combination of Pokemon, Monster Hunter, and long-running Nintendo series. The Vita was set up to be a niche system and lowering the memory card prices wouldn't have fixed any of their obstacles towards mainstream success. If anything, you could argue that the memory cards helped salvage the system as they made it very difficult to pirate games which help result in the system having one of the highest paid attach rates ever. Yeah, not many people bought the Vita, but if your game budget isn't too high, you have a decent shot of selling enough copies to make a profit to the people who did buy the system.
Pretty much. I get why Sony did it this way at launch, but i would much rather have paid more for my Vita with SD support instead.
Seriously. OP's stance regarding the memory cards is ridiculous.
bobbychalkers
Member
I'm surprised anybody defends those prices...
Dark-Cloudz
Member
ITT everyone disagrees with the OP. Has there ever been such a start contrast in Neogaf history?!
Vital Tundra
Member
Beats me, but when you make an OP like that you are going to get hate, hard!
OnimaruXLR
Member
Companies can charge as much money as they want for their products. That's their prerogative.
But customers are under no obligation to buy it.
But customers are under no obligation to buy it.
Especially with such an underwhelming library of exclusives
GiantBreadbug
Member
This is honestly just delusional.
They're marked up SD cards that are more or less mandatory for the system. Biggest reason why I never got a Vita despite it having a largely solid library.
So yeah, by all accounts and figures they suck and should not even exist.
They're marked up SD cards that are more or less mandatory for the system. Biggest reason why I never got a Vita despite it having a largely solid library.
So yeah, by all accounts and figures they suck and should not even exist.
belteshazzar
Member
I firmly believe this to be troll thread. It has to be. That or OP suffers of some mental ailment. Anyway, moving on. Just gonna ignore it.
perfectsil
Member
The issue was never that vita doesn't have internal memory, it's that standard Sd with the same capacity costs 1/5 what vita card costs
autoduelist
Member
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_/¯
Huh? Of course it was a 'choice'. Prototypes often use 'standard' stuff before the proprietary stuff is developed, it's not 'evidence' of anything other than the standard development process.
OP is right that the price of the cards subsidized the Vita to some degree at launch. It was a bad decision, clearly, but Sony often succeeds at implementing new storage solutions and in this case they were obviously trying to remove as many piracy vectors from the Vita as possible.
Had the Vita been successful, the storage would have had higher production and become cheaper. Instead, it wasn't, so production remained niche and overly pricey.
It was definitely a mistake to have proprietary cards, but again, I'm absolutely sure the engineers had a mandate to remove every piracy vector possible. The idea that it was 'greed' is overly simplistic and doesn't really address the reason they used proprietary cards at all.
OP's post is odd, but I think he was just trying to say if they didn't have removable memory that people wouldn't have balked as much at the price. I think he's wrong, but so are many people in this thread that aren't even trying to understand what brought Sony to make the decision they did in the first place.
Chronospherics
Member
The Vita was liable to be an inherently expensive system and to me it seems like the memory card approach was intended to split the cost of that system. Most likely allowing them to reduce margins on the console.
If people weren't complaining about the cost of the memory cards they would have been complaining about the cost of the system as a whole, and Sony wanted to differ that complaint regarding the system pricing, away from the core hardware.
In either case it's unlikely it resulted in a significant increase in the cost to the consumer, as it would have resulted in increased margins being placed on the system itself.
Since then however, in Europe at the very least, the mega pack and other bundles are very affordable anyway. You can buy a 16 GB memory card that comes with 8 games (PSP and Vita) for £40. I don't think that's bad value and there are lots of different bundles. There's one with 5 lego games, one with a load of action games, one with LBP and a load of other stuff.
Ultimately it launched as a premium system but it's pretty affordable now, as with many previous console failures (Dreamcast, Wii U) what let the Vita down was its overall eventual lineup and third party support. It has some good titles but it doesn't feature a robust lineup of high quality titles that its competition does. I'm not saying you shouldn't own one, but if you were only going to own one handheld then you miss out on more by not owning a 3DS, and that's the issue.
Plus, the Vita's premium price was appealing to the slightly more adult, teenager and college student market, but the problem that I see is that all of those people are absorbed into games like Smash Bros and Pokemon. Those games dominated their early childhood and games like Lumines, Rayman and Ninja Gaiden, while great games in their own right, are available elsewhere and simply not system sellers. Since then, Sony failed to secure or create any of the big IPs required to draw everyone's attention.
Had the Vita succeeded, the memory prices would have become cheaper with time as production increased, but this didn't happen as the system didn't gain the traction anticipated. However that responsibility is more to do with software and marketing than anything else, in my opinion.
So yeah I agree with the OP to a degree, memory cards weren't the issue. People see them as being expensive but neglect that that cost is intentionally differed away from the hardware. It's like people that complain about postage prices on ebay when the seller is selling the item for half the price of everyone else. Surely you can grasp the idea that they might not have the highest margin on the main item?
If people weren't complaining about the cost of the memory cards they would have been complaining about the cost of the system as a whole, and Sony wanted to differ that complaint regarding the system pricing, away from the core hardware.
In either case it's unlikely it resulted in a significant increase in the cost to the consumer, as it would have resulted in increased margins being placed on the system itself.
Since then however, in Europe at the very least, the mega pack and other bundles are very affordable anyway. You can buy a 16 GB memory card that comes with 8 games (PSP and Vita) for £40. I don't think that's bad value and there are lots of different bundles. There's one with 5 lego games, one with a load of action games, one with LBP and a load of other stuff.
Ultimately it launched as a premium system but it's pretty affordable now, as with many previous console failures (Dreamcast, Wii U) what let the Vita down was its overall eventual lineup and third party support. It has some good titles but it doesn't feature a robust lineup of high quality titles that its competition does. I'm not saying you shouldn't own one, but if you were only going to own one handheld then you miss out on more by not owning a 3DS, and that's the issue.
Plus, the Vita's premium price was appealing to the slightly more adult, teenager and college student market, but the problem that I see is that all of those people are absorbed into games like Smash Bros and Pokemon. Those games dominated their early childhood and games like Lumines, Rayman and Ninja Gaiden, while great games in their own right, are available elsewhere and simply not system sellers. Since then, Sony failed to secure or create any of the big IPs required to draw everyone's attention.
Had the Vita succeeded, the memory prices would have become cheaper with time as production increased, but this didn't happen as the system didn't gain the traction anticipated. However that responsibility is more to do with software and marketing than anything else, in my opinion.
So yeah I agree with the OP to a degree, memory cards weren't the issue. People see them as being expensive but neglect that that cost is intentionally differed away from the hardware. It's like people that complain about postage prices on ebay when the seller is selling the item for half the price of everyone else. Surely you can grasp the idea that they might not have the highest margin on the main item?
Omegasquash
Member
This is a fair argument, however it's one example of many possible. We're both talking about "could have" situations.
My submission is simply that sticker shock happens. Whether or not that's a major reason for the commercial failure (so to speak) of the Vita is definitely debatable, but I think it's a bit wrong to dismiss it outright.
zackmorris
Member
It's not a phone. It's a gaming device that runs really large games, and there are much cheaper alternatives they could have used to address the issue
Honestly people would've been happy to pay anything for the Vita. A well designed portable with plenty of power plus remote play. I wouldn't be satisfied with the minimum amount of memory required. I'd want the big cards! Expensive, but a one time investment at least.
The problem is that Sony half-assed the support for it. In a lot of instances and shows, it's almost like Sony forgot that the Vita ever existed. Nintendo on the other hand, they put a shit ton of support behind the 3DS and even improved it (whereas Vita cheapened out with the LCD display). The library that Nintendo has is solid and the support for it is fantastic.
Sony just dropped the ball, and it's stupid, because it had the potential to easily leave the 3DS in the dust.
The problem is that Sony half-assed the support for it. In a lot of instances and shows, it's almost like Sony forgot that the Vita ever existed. Nintendo on the other hand, they put a shit ton of support behind the 3DS and even improved it (whereas Vita cheapened out with the LCD display). The library that Nintendo has is solid and the support for it is fantastic.
Sony just dropped the ball, and it's stupid, because it had the potential to easily leave the 3DS in the dust.
Audioboxer
Member
lol, so true it literally deserves a laugh out loud.
I bought my 128GB card for my 3DS for less than my 64GB Vita card (which was imported to save money ~ this 128GB card was less than the fucking UK priced 32GB). Now that is some fucked up shit. Totally blows the speed arguments out the ass as well given the 128GB card is fast (class 10).
To be fair that was on sale, but it's still only £41 on Amazon just now
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00M562LF4/
I'm still here and reading responses. I've said everything I had to say on it, so no point repeating myself. Thought this thread would die but North Americans are probably just starting their day.
If I suffer from some mental ailment, then Sony should be submitted to a looney hospital.
I'm glad some posters can see the sense in the OP even if they don't agree.
MooMilk2929
Junior Member
I think the reason Sony used it's own format for vita memory cards is to stop piracy. It seemed to work. They only recently have started to dump games. They had to use a ProDuo to vita memory card adapter to do it. If it hadn't been for that adapter vita could have still been secure. Nintendo 3ds used sd cards and look how quickly 3ds got hacked.
Vital Tundra
Member
It worked in the worst way imaginable. Its not like the PSP or PSX were a failure and those are literally piracy the console.
Guess the OP has never heard of Android phones. My Note can have massive memory upgrades for a few dollars on a micro SD card.
The prices were and still are ridiculous. Also, I bought the Vita DAY ONE...not years down the road when it's cheaper X-D.
I'd rather pay a bit more up front and have cheap memory options.
The prices were and still are ridiculous. Also, I bought the Vita DAY ONE...not years down the road when it's cheaper X-D.
I'd rather pay a bit more up front and have cheap memory options.
Side note Apple's markups are sickening. I've liked my iPhones (have had 4 generations), but they're massive ripoffs tech wise.
Yes this is a great post and exactly what I was trying to say.
I know some posters have said the memory card was a huge reason they lost interest in the system but I don't think it was the single most important reason the Vita failed. If anything the games failed to excite the mainstream audience. The best game on the system was an 8 year old JRPG from the PS2.
And other terrible decisions included the Backtouch which probably added significantly to the cost of the hardware and was barely used. Splitting up the user base between wifi and 3G which ultimately meant no 3G functions in any games. No multiplayer games over 3G which was a huge mistake considering the iPhone 3GS was out at the same time and changing the landscape of portable gaming. The inability to not be able to have different accounts on the system which lead to not being able to use different PlayStation stores is still incredibly frustrating and prevents significant revenue. The end of first party games on the system was also a poor decision that put the final nail in the vita coffin as a mainstream device.
And yet many gamers still persist with the vita, because it's a great unique handheld for many games. There's plenty of vita games that have been ported to steam but the best place to play them is still on the vita. Games like Danganronpa, Stranger of Sword City, VNs and dungeon crawlers are perfect handheld games.
potatohead
Member
Dumb comparison because these were not the prices at the start, and still SD card prices are way cheaper.
OP fail. Do your research better. All that effort to defend the prices was wasted, because you didn't want to look at the other evidence available.
SD card use could've saved the Vita. It probably would've brought piracy to the system much faster, and at a cost of game sales, but the hardware would've moved a lot more.
Many people already had SD cards too they could just try using with Vita. Memory cards was a big added cost that was a mostly unnecessary caveat of the Vita and increased the price of using the system and still does today.
I love my Vita though. And my $100 64 GB card. Still expensive though.
My next phone will probably be a xiaomi if they are as good as the mi 5 seems to be. It'll be a 1/3rd of the price of an iPhone.
One thing they should have done at the very very least is to bring out a 128gb memory card and shifted the pricing down accordingly. They obviously couldn't bother with the vita anymore, but I think that would helped their image in some way. Even Apple have moved the 64gb to mid tier.
potatohead
Member
Also the iPhone comparisons... smh.
Vita is not the iPhone. Literally everyone uses a smartphone these days, and people are willing to spend hundreds of dollars every year to get a new iPhone.
The comparison isn't valid not only because of those aspects though. That's just the beginning of why the comparison is useless. People aren't lining up for Vita's as a status accessory.
Vita is not the iPhone. Literally everyone uses a smartphone these days, and people are willing to spend hundreds of dollars every year to get a new iPhone.
The comparison isn't valid not only because of those aspects though. That's just the beginning of why the comparison is useless. People aren't lining up for Vita's as a status accessory.
CaviarMeths
Member
Not only is it a totally fair criticism, but the size limitation is too. If you're planning on having a digital Vita library, 64GB is peanuts. Most full sized games are hitting 3-4GB each, some even double that. I'm constantly having to move and remove stuff to make room for things. Meanwhile, my 3DS has 55 full retail games on it, plus indies and VC, and the SD card is barely half full.
For all the shit Nintendo gets for not having a "real" account system, the 3DS is still a more viable platform for going digital than the Vita.
For all the shit Nintendo gets for not having a "real" account system, the 3DS is still a more viable platform for going digital than the Vita.
The iPhone, and frankly all phones for the past several years use storage that completely destroys the Vita in speed and performance too so fuck that.
MooMilk2929
Junior Member
This talks about needing MS Duo to dump games.
StrikeFirst117
Banned
I'm sorry I can't understand how someone even thought to try and defend this memory card bullshit that Sony has been pulling ever since the PSP. When it costs £45 to 50 ish pounds for 32 GB of memory which is absolutely disgraceful, when they could have simply let us use some form of SD card slot which is much cheaper.
An sd card of 32 GB costs under 9 pound which is pretty great value, the Sony one is far from any kind of value.
An sd card of 32 GB costs under 9 pound which is pretty great value, the Sony one is far from any kind of value.
The thing that bothers me the most is that Vita memory cards have been a reason to not buy the Vita. I really don't know what the real impact has been, but it can;t have helped the Vita's chances in the market that the first thing you need to buy when you get a Vita is an expensive memory card.
If Sony ever gets into this market again, I hope they learned their lesson.
If Sony ever gets into this market again, I hope they learned their lesson.
What does that lead us with? The Vita was too expensive as a handheld. And I'd say that an extra 40 or so bucks for a 16GB card is quite a hefty price combined with the already expensive device. Of course, if you were to buy a Vita now with the heavily discounted price and a bunch of stuff added on top - who cares about the extra money on memory cards. But after shelving over 200 bucks (seems to have already been 50 bucks off two months after release...) for the Vita itself I could in no way justify to myself to buy anything more than 8GB back then. And it's certainly not fun to use the system with so little space.
Sony got their priorities wrong and we had to suffer for it.
MooMilk2929
Junior Member
It's a portable PS3. What'd ya expect?
Edit: I also don't get why people complain you gotta buy a memory card with the Vita when you gotta buy a Hard Drive with the WiiU. If you don't you can't even update Smash Bros on the 8 gb models. And it won't let you use a SD card instead of a Hard Drive either.
potatohead
Member
Lol no.
The hardware in Vita was powerful though, for a mobile, and that's why it costed that much. It was an octacore chip with a very beefy GPU at the time.
And you can use a generic external hard drive on a WiiU. Another not so good comparison.
one could argue that they probably shouldnt have done that. Including a hard drive probably wouldnt have increased the ltd sales of the unit, but some did see it as an addtional cost.
The Vita...i love the vita. i have owned a 1000 and a 2000. would absolutely buy a 3000 day one if it had 5ghz wireless, and better remote play support. With that being said, comparing the vita to an iphone is a mistake. Sony should have never introduced the proprietary memory format. It was completely unnecessary. they should have went with the industry standard and just put SD Cards in. Much bigger sizes, cheaper... Could have included a 4gb card without affecting their bill of materials too much and put it on the end user if they absolutely wanted another card. Or if they wanted to take one out of another device. That is on sony.
partyphone
Banned
don't they? what-about-ism aside the Wii U is also a tremendous failure!
JayBabay
Member
Same here. If I wanted it bad enough that I began to feel I "needed" it I may have bought one and paid 40% of its cost on a memory card. However, for the average customer who might just want one to enjoy casually or sometimes take advantage of its features with PS4, this is a barrier for me because it realistically turns something that I value at $200, and makes it cost almost $300. Unless you want to only have 2 games on it at any given time..
zerokoolpsx
Member
I say the criticism is completely justified. Making it proprietary was just another nail in the Vita coffin. Not used in any other device is more salt in the wound. At least the psp memory 2 duo could be used in other devices. And of course, the price and the size vs other sd cards. I loved my Vita, but Sony really screwed the pooch on that one.
RevolverRoden
Member
Fuck apple and their iPhone pricing too