As part of today’s Sony Conference 2013 for Japan, Sony announced lower prices for all existing Playstation Vita memory cards, as well as a new iteration at 64 GB.
4 GB memory cards are going down from 2,095 yen to 1,480 yen, 8 GB from 3,048 yen to 1,980 yen, 16 GB from 5,238 yen to 3,780 yen, and 32 GB from 9,048 yen to 6,480 yen. This matches price cuts we already know are coming to the West.
The new 64 GB memory card is retailing for 10,479 yen, roughly equivalent to $ 105. At this price, it actually costs a little more than the Vita TV! Of course, getting both might be an interesting value proposition as a console. This is also close to the original price of the 32 GB card.
While a new 64 GB memory card is sure to be a welcome addition to core fans, it does not quite address a larger problem consumers have, with the memory cards being proprietary in the first place. Not only does it force you to get your memory exclusively from Sony, it also limits your options in terms of where and how to get that extra memory.
The lower prices are definitely going to help lower the barrier to entry, but it’s nowhere near enough to get a bigger audience on board. It is unavoidable at this point, but Sony painted themselves into a corner with these memory cards, as we already know they do not provide any better performance than the more common SD standards. While it may be possible they can no longer tinker with the hardware to use any other memory card format, I think the reasonable thing to do at this point is price them the same as SD card prices already are. Keeping it higher will continue to be a chink in the armor of the Vita line of consoles.
