4 ms·

I undertand why people are upset that Sony charges more money for those cards than off-the-shelf SD cards, but there are few (arguably bad) reasons for that. F

by klausa 15y ago

I undertand why people are upset that Sony charges more money for those cards than off-the-shelf SD cards, but there are few (arguably bad) reasons for that. First of all, these are MUCH smaller than SD cards - microSD are better for comparisons (granted, those are much cheaper too) - but there are two reasons why those cards are priced like that. Secondly - it's no mystery that console makers lose money on hardware they sell, and recoup part of the cost on accessories and licenses on games - and it's easier to upsell $30 4GB memory card, than charge $280 or $330 for portable console. Thirdly - making them proprietary prevents you from putting those cards in any random microSD card reader and putting whatever you want on them - and Sony spokespersons publicly admitted that they are proprietary to make eventual piracy harder.

civild 15y ago
Your second (third?) point is moot, since Sony's own Content Manager Assistant[1] can copy anything from your Vita memory card onto a Mac or PC. The piracy chat from Sony's spokespersons is pure marketing dross. As for their right to earn money, I don't think anyone is debating that - Digital Foundary's main criticism is the speed of the media, which is (through empirical testing of course) significantly worse than standard microSD cards that are much cheaper. The best comparison though is to Nintendo's 3DS which comes bundled with a standard SD card, and it hasn't fallen to piracy yet. [1] http://cma.dl.playstation.net/cma/ http://cma.dl.playstation.net/cma/
- klausa 15y ago
  Ah, that's weird. I was under impression that CMA would allow you only to copy over specific data - akin to iTunes, but seems I was wrong. (Or was I? From the link: You can display lists of music, image, and video files stored on your computer and transfer the files to your PS Vita system. That sounds like iTunes-esque thing - is anyone here in possession of Vita and could chime in about this?) Nevertheless, thanks for that link.
  - civild 15y ago
    It allows you to copy pretty much anything, including "Apps" of which Games are a subtype. PSP hacker websites like Wololo are already poring over encrypted .psvimg files. I know this because I own one, and I ran out of space on my 4GB Vita memory card within a day just by downloading games from PSN. The CMA is a life saver because I can use my PC as backup storage, essentially, without being forced to buy a larger, more expensive, memory card. Of course, this just leaves the matter of convenience, which is why the performance of the media is such an annoying factor. As for the CMA itself, it simply acts as a daemon once it is set up - there's no GUI and all file transfers are handled on the Vita itself.

by klausa 15y ago

civild 15y ago

Your second (third?) point is moot, since Sony's own Content Manager Assistant[1] can copy anything from your Vita memory card onto a Mac or PC. The piracy chat from Sony's spokespersons is pure marketing dross. As for their right to earn money, I don't think anyone is debating that - Digital Foundary's main criticism is the speed of the media, which is (through empirical testing of course) significantly worse than standard microSD cards that are much cheaper. The best comparison though is to Nintendo's 3DS which comes bundled with a standard SD card, and it hasn't fallen to piracy yet. [1] http://cma.dl.playstation.net/cma/ http://cma.dl.playstation.net/cma/

klausa 15y ago
Ah, that's weird. I was under impression that CMA would allow you only to copy over specific data - akin to iTunes, but seems I was wrong. (Or was I? From the link: You can display lists of music, image, and video files stored on your computer and transfer the files to your PS Vita system. That sounds like iTunes-esque thing - is anyone here in possession of Vita and could chime in about this?) Nevertheless, thanks for that link.
- civild 15y ago
  It allows you to copy pretty much anything, including "Apps" of which Games are a subtype. PSP hacker websites like Wololo are already poring over encrypted .psvimg files. I know this because I own one, and I ran out of space on my 4GB Vita memory card within a day just by downloading games from PSN. The CMA is a life saver because I can use my PC as backup storage, essentially, without being forced to buy a larger, more expensive, memory card. Of course, this just leaves the matter of convenience, which is why the performance of the media is such an annoying factor. As for the CMA itself, it simply acts as a daemon once it is set up - there's no GUI and all file transfers are handled on the Vita itself.