GameStop Leaks Vita Memory Card Pricing

[nebtheslayer95]

the picture accompanying this article is just too perfect . Luckily I have moved away from my old hand-held gaming addiction, so I can stay out of the red when Vita comes out. Yay me.

 

[insanelich]

I won't troll you like that other fellow Outrageous Emu seems to be doing, but understand that thus far, the 3DS has been utterly unimpressive. Yeah, I know Zelda remake and Star Fox remake and a new Mario Kart and a new Mario 3D platformer and yadda yadda. Same old song and dance. Meanwhile, the Vita has quite an attractive lineup that seems, to me, far more inventive and impressive than anything Nintendo's releasing. Sorry. Opinions.

To be fair, I have to admit the 3DS lineup isn't impressive.

... but the Vita lineup is so impressive I'm getting an iPhone.

 

[Mad World]

Out of principle alone, I don't think that I'd get a Vita. If they're going to charge outrageous prices for their memory cards, at least include the smallest-amount card with the system.

 

[FamoFunk]

I'm gonna sit back and wait for a price drop. I have patience.

 

[TheEvilCheese]

Just blowing off steam. Maybe the cards will be egregiously overpriced at release -- just like Wii cards, which have dropped to somewhere between "badly overpriced" and "somewhat overpriced"

Wii cards? Pretty sure every nintendo console of the last few years (Wii, DSI, 3DS) uses standard SD cards. You know, the ones that cost nothing?


OT: To be fair, they need to make some money back on the initial sales (selling console at a loss). Yet this seems ridiculous. I would like to see some sort of justification for the cost of these memory cards. This doesn't make me less likely to buy one though- just going to wait until I know the third party equivalent for half the price works.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

That's what they always do though. Remember the original cost of memory cards for the PSP and PS2?

The difference then, however, was that the PS2 was a fairly significant upgrade in space from the PS1 memory cards (at least for the time).

This is just plain bullshit now, though. Since we've hit so many standardised ways of storing data, this shouldn't happen.

 

[Spud of Doom]

That's just silly. I'm going to wait for the inevitable dodgy 3rd party knock-offs on DealExtreme or adapters from other formats.

 

[EricKei]

Wii cards? Pretty sure every nintendo console of the last few years (Wii, DSI, 3DS) uses standard SD cards. You know, the ones that cost nothing?

That's what I was referring to -- But the thing is, not ALL SD cards work reliably in the system (There were massive "Post your SD card results from your Wii" threads on some boards -- many cards worked fine, some glitched out, some simply were not even recognized even if they were within the card size limit), and Ninty tends to insist that you should ONLY use the ones they officially endorse. During the first year or two of the Wii's release, in particular, these "Wii-branded and guaranteed to work" SD cards were typically sold for at least double the price of similar SD cards from anybody else, especially the ones sold at actual video game and bigbox stores.

 

[madster11]

Sony need to fuck right off with their stupid memory card bullshit and adopt SD. The format every single other device and company on the planet uses.

No PSV for me if Sony are gonna pull this sort of bullshit pricing.

 

[Subject7]

LMAO

I'm sorry, I'm still rolling around in my head the fact that they want us to pay $30 for 4gb. I can buy a 32gb flash drive for that price.

 

[TheEvilCheese]

Wii cards? Pretty sure every nintendo console of the last few years (Wii, DSI, 3DS) uses standard SD cards. You know, the ones that cost nothing?

That's what I was referring to -- But the thing is, not ALL SD cards work reliably in the system, and Ninty tends to insist that you should ONLY use the ones they officially endorse. During the first year or two of the Wii's release, in particular, these "Wii-branded and guaranteed to work" SD cards were typically sold for at least double the price of similar SD cards from anybody else, especially the ones sold at actual video game and bigbox stores.

Oh fair enough, I don't remember seeing any Wii branded cards around but it may just be a locality thing. I kind of understand people buying the branded ones though, seems kind of silly but a company will attempt to make a profit whenever possible.

I went and bought the cheapest SD card I could as soon as I got my Wii, and it still works perfectly five years later.

 

[EricKei]

Oh fair enough, I don't remember seeing any Wii branded cards around but it may just be a locality thing. I kind of understand people buying the branded ones though, seems kind of silly but a company will attempt to make a profit whenever possible.

True. As you mentioned earlier, hardware is generally sold at a significant loss, or at break-even at best; the Wii was allegedly one of the few exceptions, though I'm not 100% certain. Either way -- the Wii had a decent amount of internal storage anyway, so it's not like their use was mandatory.

I'll reserve my own potential outrage for the card pricing once I see it. I do think that Sony should go with SD cards, though. They're ubiquitous, and, as a result, cheaper for Sony to buy/rebrand and make a profit on, should they desire to do so.

 

[Ziadaine_v1legacy]

I think Im going to hold off a Vita until I hear news about my PSP games being playable, the price drops on those cards and/or someone cracks them just right, to play PSP games off them so I can still play my games.

AT LEAST USE FUCKING SD CARDS LIKE THE REST OF TODAY'S TECHNOLOGY SONY!

 

[Lancer873]

Ick...
All things considered though, it's looking like a small to moderately significant blemish on the otherwise strong face of the Vita. If I were to choose between a Vita and a 3DS... well the 3DS is significantly lacking a Megaman Legends game and the Vita has an awesome twin-stick-shooter. I can't say I'm fond of this news but it still seems cool. Unfortunately, college prevents me from getting much of anything extra in the next three years... so... oh well.

 

[For.I.Am.Mad]

That's ridiculous. You can get a 4GB memory card right now for 3 dollars.

 

[Kahani]

I'm not sure why people keep going on about how cheap they can get an SD card, since it depends entirely on the specs. Sure, you can get a crappy class 4 SD card for much less than this Sony one. Or you can get a decent class 10 microSD for hardly less at all. Depending on the specs of this new card, it could be anything from a complete rip-off to actually a really good deal.

Sure, it sucks that people keep trying to force us to use proprietary formats when there are already perfectly good standards, apparently for no reason other than to piss us off. But when it comes down to it, very few people are actually going to want to swap the card out of their Vita and use it in another device, so it really makes no difference at all that it's a non-standard format. And without knowing the specs, which I can't find detailed anywhere yet, it's impossible to say if it's overpriced or not. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's a little more expensive than it should be, but I really doubt it's anywhere near as bad as all the rage here would suggest.

 

[jboking]

Not surprised, but this does mean I won't be getting this $300 handheld.

 

[Username Redacted]

I already hated the Vita's existence for the fact that a game I was looking forward to (BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend) is being delayed so that the console and handheld versions launch concurrently. I have further hate for the Vita because one of the primary reasons given for the assification of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3's HUD is so that it will look good/acceptable in the Vita version. This memory card thing is just sort of icing on the cake and I already had nails left over after closing the coffin on yet another failed Sony handheld. Also memo to devs and publishers: stop fucking over console games for a handheld version for a handheld that isn't even out and that given this memory card BS probably isn't even going to sell particularly well.