I'm sorry there is a typo in the title of this article... let me fix that... oh wait no sorry that isn't a typo at all. GameStop has posted its prices for a Vita memory card and it is quite outrageous. Read on to hear all about it and why they are charging so much.
The pricing structure is as follows:
- 4GB card: $24.99
- 8GB card: $39.99
- 16GB card: $69.99
- 32GB card: $119.99
- System with WiFi: $250 (for comparison purposes)
- System with WiFi & 3G: $300 (for comparison purposes)
Now you might be wondering why it would cost so much for a 4GB-32GB card when you can go onto Amazon and get a 16GB Class 10 SDHC SD card for $20 (less than a third of the price of the Sony card). Heck the 32GB card costs almost half of what the system costs.
Well the guessing time is over as Sony has unveiled they are using none other than proprietary cards for the Vita. In a world where smartphone manufacturers have adopted a standard mini-USB charging/syncing cable, Sony is taking a giant leap backwards and choosing proprietary memory over a tried and true conventional SD memory card.
Sony has stated that they are doing this because of the following two reasons:
- SD cards come in many different flavors and not all SD cards perform as well as other cards.
- SD cards are easily hacked as shown with the PSP.
The first bullet is really easy to refute. Smartphones all use SD cards. You can store games on them, play games of them, and they all perform fine. Same as the Wii, 3DS, and other devices/consoles. There may be different performance statistics for each SD card but this is a lousy excuse to charge as much as Sony has stated above.
The second bullet is harder to refute but mostly everything can be hacked over time and I believe that will include this proprietary memory. It will probably be cracked fast as hackers will get wind of this and consider it a challenge to the hacking community by Sony.
As expected the interwebs are up-in-arms over the news right now and we'll see if this affects the Vita's sales in the end.
