Discouraging Playstation Vita Details

itwbennett writes "Sony's new handheld gaming system, the Playstation Vita, launches in Japan in two weeks, and the latest report from Andriasang has some interesting details, including Sony's decision to go with proprietary memory cards. Sony says this is both for security reasons and to ensure a consistent experience for all users, but that 'doesn't explain why they're charging such enormous sums for these cards,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'The caveat here is that we haven't seen official pricing for the cards, but game retailer Gamestop lists them at $120 (!!) for a 32 GB card, $70 for a 16GB, $45 for 8 GB and $30 for a 4 GB.'"

Comments

First

[Anonymous Coward]

which is why I don't buy Sony anymore...

Re:First

[Enderandrew]

This also isn't news. When they announced the device months ago they said it would use proprietary memory, and people reported that memory would be really expensive.

The device itself is selling at $250, which really isn't a bad price for the hardware if you look at it. I suspect they're selling the device for a loss and trying to make their money back with the storage.

Re:First

[Firehed]

It's not like it should come as a surprise to anyone that Sony has chosen to create yet another proprietary format (and attempted to lock it down beyond simply being incompatible with anything else). They got away with it in the '80s and '90s because they actually made good hardware and the concept of interoperability barely existed. The only time they've had any real success with it was Blu-Ray, and I'm sure that hasn't seen the adoption they'd like since legal download services so shortly after its introduction, and their attempts to force it down everyone's throats have certainly been expensive. Today the reverse is true - their products tend to be sub-par and we increasingly expect stuff to work across our devices, but they're still stuck in the past.

Re:First

[Guspaz]

Sort of. They weren't the first, they were one of a bunch of competing formats, and eventually the industry standards body agreed on a new format based on (but different from) Sony's offering. So they didn't invent them, but they can lay claim to having been a key player. But that wasn't really a Sony format war since their standard wasn't adopted as-is...

In fact, except for BluRay, Sony has lost every format war they've ever fought. BetaMax/VHS (VHS crushed beta), NT casette/microcasette (nobody remembers NT casettes), MiniDisc/Flash (held on in Asia, but flash and HDD and CDs won), DAT/CD (DAT never made it beyond professional use), MMCD/SD (MMCD abandonned, SD became DVD), VCD/DVD (VCDs saw some use, but DVD came out two years later and started killing it), MemoryStick/MMC/SD/CF/Xd/etc (SD won, even some Sony products use SD rather than MS, CF only sees some professional use), ATRAC/MP3 (ATRAC never saw much adoption outside of MiniDisc), SACD/DVD-Audio (made irrelevant by digital distribution).

So, Sony has had some success with BluRay (which is itself embroiled in a format war with digital distribution), and I guess you could argue that as the basis for the eventual 3.5" floppy they sort of won that one, but not the rest. Many of the format wars they've been involved in have involved Sony pushing a format that is more proprietary (or has less other companies backing it) versus a more open standard. MemoryStick is backed by Sony, while SD is backed by the SD Card Association co-founded by Matsushita (Panasonic), SanDisk, and Toshiba, with many other companies on the board.

Old skool

[Toe, The]

So, um, does it take phone calls and run millions of apps? Or is it just some kind of limited gaming platform?

"Security"

[ksd1337]

"Security" = trying hard to make sure consumers can't jailbreak their own devices.

Re:"Security"

[sohmc]

This isn't so much about security as it is about a consistent revenue stream. They're following the "Gillette" model where they take a loss with their actual product, but make up the money in the sale of accessories.

Sony is notorious for this. They have memory sticks that only work with Sony products. This is why I will never buy a Sony product.

Re:"Security"

[what2123]

The difference with Gillette is that they sold you a product that did exactly what you wanted it to. Sony seems to keep selling things that do something one day, then as if it was a game, take away features to make it less-usable then the previous day.

Re:"Security"

[antifoidulus]

It doesn't matter, they have set a precedent that is incredibly off-putting. If they didn't want to put it in future products, fine whatever, but the fact that they would go and intentionally disable a product I already paid money for is unforgivable. Imagine if you bought a swiss army knife then after you already paid money for it the company came and demanded that it be allowed to remove the screwdriver from the knife... yeah the knife still works for the most part, but now it does less than it did when you paid for it, and the company went out of its way to do so. So what is to prevent them from removing features in the future? Maybe they don't want to support the 3g modem on the vita in a few years, just push out an update that removes that functionality. No problem right?

Well ...

[lennier1]

Let's hope they'll invest some of that excess money into administrators who won't just leave the default passwords in place.

Gouging

[AragornSonOfArathorn]

If anyone is surprised by this, they don't know Sony.

Re:Gouging

[medlefsen]

So what should a free individual do when they don't like what a company is doing? Maybe refrain from purchasing from them? Maybe tell friends and advise them to not buy from them either? Maybe even go on to a web site and post about it? Tell me when I start suggesting something unreasonable.

I'm not sure how this happened but at some point poeple got confused and started thinking that because companies are set up to always maximise profits we shouldn't be allowed to criticize any of their attempts to do so. There is a difference between wanting government regulation and using your right as a free person to criticize the actions of a company.

Sony is being anti-consumer and as a consumer that pisses me off. Other companies have found ways to make money without resorting to the lock-in BS that Sony prefers. I will not buy from them, and I will say why very loudly so that they and everyone else knows exactly why they aren't getting my business.

Ahem...

[Moheeheeko]

'doesn't explain why they're charging such enormous sums for these cards,'

Because they can.

Third Party Adapter Market

[Anonymous Coward]

This just means that someone in China will be making money off selling an adapter for microSD cards.

Re:How long until they're hacked?

[rwven]

The problem is that in today's market, with so many viable alternatives for mobile gaming entertainment, the insane cost of memory is going to be a deal breaker for most users.

Sure it has pretty graphics, but that's almost certainly going to be the one-and-only thing going FOR the Vita. I can't think of a single other argument in support of buying one of these.

Apple must use them

[Warwick Allison]

Apple does exactly the same thing with iPad and iPhone prices, but doesnt let you swap the mysteriously expensive memory "cards". Clearly it's all about the value to the consumer, not the cost of manufacture.

This is Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason they're doing this is because fuck you.

Sony is not the only one.

[sacdelta]

The only difference between the iPhone 4s 32Gb and 64 Gb is 32Gb of memory. The difference in price is $100. Are you all going to vilify Apple the same way for not including the ability to insert SD cards?

Sony memory sticks...

[spd_rcr]

This is hardly news. Sony has always gone the proprietary memory format and they have always been much more expensive than the generic equivalent. Is Sony even all that relevant anymore ? I could barely give away my PSP (slim) and don't get me started on the current PS3 with it's ridiculous looking motion controllers is utterly lame next to playing Kinect games on the Xbox.
If the Vita also doubled as a decent phone, gps, and camera, I might take a look at it, but who really needs another web enabled device to lug around. My Windows Phone already ties in with my Xbox and has some entertaining away from the PC/Xbox games ... and it's a day away from getting even more integrated with my Xbox.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/05/xbox-companion-app-for-wp7-will-launch-alongside-the-new-dashboa/

bad news

[Bobtree]

This was on Kotaku yesterday: http://kotaku.com/5864910/digital-download-discount-for-vita-may-explain-sonys-memory-stick-plans

The info is unconfirmed, but it says they're charging 40% less for downloads than games at retail and that's why the memory cards are more expensive. In other words, please pay up front so they can hold your money for you, and very probably the developers don't get a cut.

Re:Good thing

[gameboyhippo]

Nintendo isn't quite as evil as you think. They're just unprepared. My daughter dropped her out of warranty DSi into the toilet. I called them up and asked them how to transfer the save data to a new 3DS (That I had in the closet waiting for Christmas). They couldn't do anything, so they repaired the DSi for free. Outside of warranty. The problem is that people are afraid to ask and see what they can get.

Re:Don't Like it...

[_xeno_]

You know, I really hate this type of comment.

"If you don't like it, don't bother complaining, just don't buy it."

Yeah, that will work. I have a better idea: let the company know why you're not buying it, and let other people know why you believe they shouldn't purchase it. That way the company has feedback on why people are refusing to buy their product, and the "invisible hand of the free market" is properly informed. Because don't forget, a proper free market involves informed customers, and people complaining about things they see as defects helps keep customers informed. (Which means that if someone is spreading lies about a product, sure, go ahead and debunk what they're saying.)

Word of mouth is important. Telling people to shut up about things that they don't like is silly and counterproductive.

Or, to invert your comment, if you don't care about high prices, don't bother complaining about people who do, just buy the expensive memory card. What do you care if other people don't?

You're gonna reap just what you sow...

[Dogtanian]

They got away with it in the '80s and '90s because they actually made good hardware and the concept of interoperability barely existed.

Not quite, remember Betamax? That was a fairly large case of interoperability- or at least support- being an issue, and Sony *not* getting away with it.

The only time they've had any real success with it was Blu-Ray

AFAIK, that isn't proprietary to the same extent, at least not in the sense that Sony almost unilaterally own and are pushing it. (Though I appreciate that they have one of the largest stakes in that business).

Today the reverse is true - their products tend to be sub-par and we increasingly expect stuff to work across our devices, but they're still stuck in the past.

Sony squandered what could have been a major lead in what became the MP3 audio market, and ended up being left behind.

In theory, MiniDisc could have been something akin to a proto-MP3 player almost a decade before (worthwhile versions of) the latter became commonplace. Some sort of very basic filesystem- just enough to let music files be copied to and from the device- would probably have been doable without increasing the technological complexity of the MiniDisc that much. Given that most people didn't have computers with enough storage to benefit from that back then, perhaps that was an understandable omission.

However, their tying it down beyond what people would have seen was technologically possible and desirable even then- i.e. forcing real-time dubbing, restricting what could be done digitally with copying, etc.- blatantly crippled the potential of the system for their own reasons, making it a slightly improved digital version of the standard cassette, but little more. The Japanese went for it, but its success was limited elsewhere.

Then when MP3 came along, they dragged their feet for ages- maybe because they saw this as a paradigm-shift threat to their existing portable players, not realising that the *real* threat was that the market was going that way anyway, and that they could join it ASAP or lose their lead. Of course, they *did* lose their market-leading position, to Apple. "iPod" was the success story of the first decade of this millennium, not some next-generation solid-state "Walkman".

Even after all this, they joined in in a half-baked cynical manner, trying to play things the old way while looking like they were embracing the new. Remember those stupid pseudo-MP3 players that required you to convert all your files to ATRAC via their crappy software before they'd support them? (No, I don't care whether that version of ATRAC was better than MP3 or not- by that point everyone had settled on MP3, Sony had *already* lost their opportunity to dictate what the market would use, and this move was just a mixture of NIH and arrogance).

So, Sony lost the portable audio market through their own arrogance, short-termist self interest, NIHism and generally blinkered short-sightedness... and they really, *really* have no-one to blame but themselves.

Re:You're gonna reap just what you sow...

[LocalH]

The form factor is still in use today, see HDCAM and HDCAM SR. Some HDCAM VTRs can playback Digital Betacam tapes, and VTRs for the other Betacam-based formats tend to be able to playback at least some of the older formats. HDCAM to this very day uses the exact same form factor as the original consumer Betamax format (albeit with more robust internals designed for the rougher treatment inherent in a day-to-day production environment). Good machines, too. I spent years working with the PVW-2800 and to this day can still perform an insert edit like I never stopped doing it.

Re:Good thing

[pionzypher]

Vita would use NGV memory cards due to size, weight, lack of noise, and other factors..

I'm fairly certain that few people would find a micro-SD card too heavy or too big. Also, I can't recall what noise my micro-SD card makes... anyone?


Every one of those reasons is spurious. Let's just call it what it is. It's Sony being Sony; and that's ok.