When is the PS3 Version going to get cancelled?

[Malzian]

As someone said earlier of the anti-PS3 nonsense, you are adopting a very western centric view. There are in fact plenty of games on Vita for other regions, Japan/Asia in particular. Which works out very well for gamers who want their JRPG and other genre typical of Japanese gaming.

The cost of a 32GB memory card is a one off investment that pays dividends. When people routinely throw away $600 on the latest iPhone that can't even take a memory card of any kind, it's pretty silly to complain about the cost of Vita.

I actually do own a Vita, and bought it when the naive promise that Sega was going to release PSO2 here for it on the Vita, a promise that hasn't played out very well.

Now, as far as the statement about the price of the console goes... you're missing core details which change the valuation of that media I mentioned quite strongly.

First, yes it is compared well against the price of Smartphones, however... the Vita is not a smartphone. It it a personal, handheld gaming device whose main competition in the hand-held market is the DS and 3DS. They are reasonably priced against each other on the baseline, until you realize that if you want to do any of the wonderful downloading of games (that the 3DS does natively, mind you), you must have one of their memory cards. Note that the base $199 WiFi unit does not come with a memory card so you will be required to buy at least the 16GB one unless you got the bundle that comes with an 8GB (which why wouldn't you since you get the card and a game for the same price?).

The problem beyond that lies not so much in the price of the memory cards, themselves, but the fact that the cards are little more than SD cards in a proprietary form-factor which means you can't use standard SD cards with them even though the internal specs are virtually the same. What does that mean? Standard 16GB SanDisk SD Card is $8.44 on Amazon. 16GB Vita card is $34.99. That is 4x the price... for what is basically the same tech squeezed into a different box where the "box" has all the specialized functionality of a SD Micro adapter (which, by the way, is only like $4 so you bring the price of the SD card to $12 and the Vita card is still nearly 3x the cost).

Vita had all the chances to be a good product, and honestly it is a powerful system and I would have loved to have seen more from it then we have. However, despite the system being more economically priced now (it was much more than $199 on release), the cost of those cards in addition to the lack of any real content released on it were a downright killer and have kept it from gaining any real traction in the market.

[Kosmos992k]

Now, as far as the statement about the price of the console goes... you're missing core details which change the valuation of that media I mentioned quite strongly.

The problem beyond that lies not so much in the price of the memory cards, themselves, but the fact that the cards are little more than SD cards in a proprietary form-factor which means you can't use standard SD cards with them even though the internal specs are virtually the same.

Actually, that has nothing to do with the issue of 'value' of the card. The cards are the primary mode of storage for the Vita. Yes, an absolute comparison against 1 specific form of flash memory SD cards makes the Vita's memory look poor, that's not entirely true compared to other memory formats.You also skip over the fact that those full size SD cards you mention are at fire sale prices, while Micro-SD cards (the current standard) are more expensive. However, this is all fiddling at the fringe.

Yes, you can poke fun at the cost of the storage media, but a fully decked out Vita with 32GB was still far less than an iphone. Try playing shooters without sticks and buttons. Smartphones are fine for certain types of games but fall flat on their face hard when 'serious' games come up.

The point though that I was making was that the Vita failed to gain traction in the Western markets because it was mortally wounded by the media and gamer community before it even launched. Rather than give the device a chance, it was quite literally pronounced dead before launch. The post I was responding to was making a point about developers not developing for the Vita. I was pointing out that while that is true in the west, in Japan, Vita has much more traction, and as a gamer with a Vita in the West, it's pretty awesome to have access to as many good games from Japan as we have. Some games are even making the jump from Vita to PS4 - Sword Art games, for example.

But, if you are so sensitive to price, I should ask why game at all? All gaming platforms cost $$, some more than others. Games cost $60 brand new on major platforms - which would net you almost 2 Vita 16GB cards. So you are basically dismissing the product because it's primary means of storage costs half of a game. Really?

You seem awfully over sensitive to the cost of one storage card that you will likely never replace.

Either way, it's a real shame gamers in the West behave like sheeple, the consequence is that they miss out on the awesome games on the Vita while they play their free Angry Birds clone.