Poll: The PS Vita and the future of digital...

[SenseOfTumour]

OR in short, why the PS Vita absolutely isn't the future of DD.

Firstly, charging more for online downloads than a packaged game from a real store. No.

Secondly, and this is more important. Charging £75 for a 32gb memory card, when anyone who's heard of google can get a memory card of that size for about £18. It's blatant profiteering, but of the most stupid, shortsighted, business dumb kind.

You pay for a game from the PS Store, and it's 4gb, firstly, you're probably paying more than if you'd just bought the damn game from Amazon. Secondly, you've got to factor in that you need 4GB of storage to use it, that's about another £10 on top.

That's like buying a cinema ticket, then finding out you have to pay rent by the hour for the seat. You've got no option, except to just not go and buy the DVD online for less than the price of the ticket. (again, duh, people are going to shop around Sony, money is tight).

I put this to the next generation too.

If you want us buying the PS4 or the Xbox 1080, don't expect us to pay £100 for a 120gb HDD addon, if you're charging us more than £60 for a 1TB drive, you're screwing your own customers by charging them for space to put the stuff they're going to buy.

If I have to pay stupid amounts to just be able to use the things I buy, it's going to restrict my buying decisions.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

A far better piece on what I'm on about than the meandering nonsense I posted:

http://www.ashens.com/post/18321259018/on-vita-download-game-pricing

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

To answer your poll question, yes it is, very much so. Although, I will argue that the thing came out not too long ago so for some reason it's going to cost more and I'm assuming there will be a price drop in regards to memory.

The other one, the PS Vita. Again, it just came out, and I don't know if Sony really knows how far it wants to go with DD, I mean, they tried it with the PSPGo, and that didn't turn out real well. However, I suspect it's the hardware's fault since it felt weird and slightly uncomfortable to hold.

I think Sony could do right with the VIta in terms of their DD with the pricing being more reasonable, and then, only then, will I think that they can get a fair idea where to go with DD. It's a handheld, and where those are going towards, it's getting damn close to mobile devices in terms how they deal with DD. I think if Nintendo, Sony, and everyone else sees how they do it, i.e. being completely convenient and accessible, then I think that's where DD will eventually go towards.

Those are my tired thoughts anyways.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Ashens on his video covering the Vita also brought up the thing about charging £40 for for an iphone game, that I believe Jim covered in his Quisition.

I'm no business expert, but I'd suggest, get a ton of cheap stuff on there, get people to buy something for a dollar, then you've got them registered, with an account, and a potential future customer, and most of us know who have Steam, its a LOT easier to end up falling for special offers when it's only a couple of clicks away.

I'd also suggest, if the Escapist ever needed another 'feature' guy, Dr Ashens would be my choice, he fits in with the theme of quite angry people picking holes in hopeless tat.

To answer your poll question, yes it is, very much so. Although, I will argue that the thing came out not too long ago so for some reason it's going to cost more and I'm assuming there will be a price drop in regards to memory.

Crazily PS2 Memory cards were still retailing at £20 for 8mb...not gb..but mb, about 10 years after release. I don't think Sony will be in any hurry to reduce their RRP. I should thank you for responding tho, as way too many of my threads end up with me shouting nonsense at myself like a homeless guy surrounded by pigeons, and I agree with much of what you said.

I would suggest about the memory cards that there's already SD and microSD card available for a quarter of what Sony are charging for their proprietary nonsense, and it just feels like a lazy way to bleed their customers for no reason other than evil. Or perhaps like the PS3, an attempt to force a new format to be more popular, but I sense the Sony Memory Stick isn't going to go the way of Blu Ray. At least Blu Ray has some advantages whilst being more expensive than its competitor. A Sony card has no advantages against any generic memory card as far as I know.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

Snip

Crazily PS2 Memory cards were still retailing at £20 for 8mb...not gb..but mb, about 10 years after release. I don't think Sony will be in any hurry to reduce their RRP. I should thank you for responding tho, as way too many of my threads end up with me shouting nonsense at myself like a homeless guy surrounded by pigeons, and I agree with much of what you said.

I would suggest about the memory cards that there's already SD and microSD card available for a quarter of what Sony are charging for their proprietary nonsense, and it just feels like a lazy way to bleed their customers for no reason other than evil. Or perhaps like the PS3, an attempt to force a new format to be more popular, but I sense the Sony Memory Stick isn't going to go the way of Blu Ray. At least Blu Ray has some advantages whilst being more expensive than its competitor. A Sony card has no advantages against any generic memory card as far as I know.

I think memory cards are a thing of the past and the Vita should've gone with what they did with the PS3 in terms of storage, and it's beyond me why they didn't, maybe to save costs...? I remember them cutting a lot to make the price point more reasonable.

No problem, it's not often I see a thread about the Vita, or Sony for that matter, that's not trashing them, but more of a question since the Vita does pose interesting questions of what might come of mobile gaming and whatnot.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Yeah, I'm not anti Sony or PSP as such, it's more that I feel they're not respecting their customers with their pricing decisions, and I think people are far more savvy in making purchasing decisions than ten years, especially as so many people know how to google the item name then "buy" or "cheap".

Personally I think memory cards are fine as storage for a mobile device, it's just that they're the place you keep your purchases, so to encourage people to spend, it should be a reasonably cheap thing to buy.

If after buying a Vita, I can only afford a 4GB memory card, it'll of course affect my purchasing decisions, do I buy that new game at full price, if it means I also have to buy another memory card to go with it? Or do I buy the retail version from Amazon, where I don't need to consider memory card space, and let them take a large cut of the profits from Sony, all because Sony can't make digital attractive.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

I hear you on the pricing deal. Friggen' 60 bucks for a 16gb memory card. And I was ecstatic, to say the least, to see Persona 1, Persona 2: Innocent Sin and P3P on the store for Vita...until I saw that they were 40 bucks each. Seriously? 40 bucks? Hard copy PSP games are 20 bucks, 30 at MOST. And I could buy a pre-owned P3P from GameStop for 15 bucks. Talk about overpricing their games. Digital copies should NEVER cost more than hard copies, considering you don't, Oh I dunno, spend money on the HARDWARE in order for you to sell the game itself.

That's really the only one thing I don't like about my shiny Vita. The way everything is so ridiculously overpriced.

 

[LiL'Tic]

battery life on this thing is piss poor too