Imagine how many more games they'd have sold if people could afford storage to put them on.
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_/¯
The prices of the memory cards are one of the reasons the Vita died. They chose to go with proprietary memory cards and they were too fucking greedy. I resent those prices and if they were reasonable, then I bet the system would still be alive, or at least had a longer life.
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.
Considering they're just specially formatted SD cards with a 4x mark up.
Yes yes they are.
I still only own a 4gig card.
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.
Knowing there was a test kit, doesn't tell you anything about Sony's motives.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
Okay, suppose we a priori had no reason to believe the Vita memory card price is too high. Let's see if this strategy has worked for Sony...
Personally, I have not taken the $20 Playstation TV I bought out of its box because I haven't felt like paying the upfront cost for a memory card instead of using the half-dozen SD cards I have in my house. Oh well, I guess I'm missing out on... uh...?
SD Card prices:
8gb: $6
16gb: $9
32gb: $21
64gb: $31
What killed the system?
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.
maybe because there are not enough games, so no one bothered to hack it?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.
The PSP used proprietary memory sticks. It was also not the cause of home-brew, the proprietary battery and games were.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.
The prices of the memory cards is one of the reasons the Vita died. They chose to go with proprietary memory cards and they were too fucking greedy. I resent those prices and if they were reasonable, then I bet the system would still be alive, or at least had a longer life.
It doesn't really matter whether the criticism is unfair or not. The market has spoken and price factor played an important role.
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.
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.
No it's not. You're making that comparison now. When the system launched it launched at $249. Sony went with a proprietary format for memory because that's what Sony does and it uneccesarily handicapped the Vita from the jump. Proprietary formats = $$$ to Sony, that's why they've launched so many. This was further compounded by the fact that some games wouldn't even run with out a memory card in the system and that pretty much means you had to buy one. It was basically a hidden cost, and a very large one at that.