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What the hell was Sony thinking with the PS Vita memory situation? (What the hell was I thinking with making this thread?)

No way someone would put out a $200+ proprietary storage solution for a current-gen console, right?

  • Yes

    Votes: 12 22.6%
  • Uh

    Votes: 2 3.8%
  • Hm...

    Votes: 1 1.9%
  • Maybe?

    Votes: 6 11.3%
  • Not gonna say any names, but...

    Votes: 28 52.8%
  • (Not A Choice): Just reminder I'm taking the piss out of an argument here, I like all the consoles.

    Votes: 4 7.5%

  • Total voters
    53

Swift_Star

Banned
Let’s make an endless number of threads that are all designed in one way or another to take the piss out of and bash Sony, try and be really clever about it, and hope the mods don't realize I'm wasting server-side storage space for these kind of threads.

I remember coming close to making a genuine thread, like really close, then I looked at my username (well, my profile pic). That killed my enthusiasm immediately. Just utterly moronic, my thread would've struggled regardless but it didn't have to be as bad as it is.

---------

Yes, this is a parody. If you want to know of what, look for the clues. They're right in front of you and your Royale with Cheese.
Understand Captain America GIF

And I think people didn’t get it. 😂
 
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Small NVMes are simply more expensive to produce and there is a smaller market for them. There's a reason why the storage capacities on the deck models are what they are.

Compared to 2280 drives of similar performance the expansion cards feel too expensive, and are in need of reduction IMO. But, there is a difference in costs between 2230 and 2280 drives, that's just reality.

The footprint for a 2280 drive in a Series S wouldn't of been a problem considering it'd be a lower-powered one running at lower speeds than higher-end PCIe 4.0 drives that were coming to the market around the time of the consoles. Even less an issue with Series X.

At first I thought the expansion cards were the better solution due to the hot-swappable reason and the expectation the prices would've came down with more partners onboard. However with MS enabling Xbox games on a multitude of devices rather than just Xboxes, the hot-swappable feature seems redundant if you only have one or two Series systems in your home, and like other people mentioned Seagate is still the only one making these.

Open it up to third party vendors, but then, there is licensing of the tech, and well, they will price parity due to licensing fees eating up all them profits.

So basically this was doomed to be a pricey long-term solution no matter what? Were MS just thinking SSDs would not drop down in price fast enough? They seemed to understand the pricing trends of flash memory in that Hot Chips presentation 🤔

Most mass produced products don't support/encourage opening the chassis. LOL That's the standard.

Smartphones are practically designed for people to pop them open to increase storage or change out their SIM cards tho.

Thicc girls aren't the best.

Lies.

Understand Captain America GIF

And I think people didn’t get it. 😂

I was hoping a few others picked up on it, but didn't want to be too obvious.
 

Drew1440

Member
Proprietary storage has always been a bad idea for consumers. Nobody should be defending it for any system. I can't think of one instance where I benefited from having proprietary storage. Well.. ...maybe Dreamcast VMU. That was kind of cool.
Not always, they are able to set a minimum standard thanks to proprietary storage. People tend to buy the most cheapest SD cards that are horrendously slow and wonder why their games take longer to load. Using the proprietary Vita cards meant Sony was able to keep control of the card specifications and as to not compromise the gamers experience
Happens all the time on Android, it's why Apple never bothered to put external storage on iOS.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
Smartphones are practically designed for people to pop them open to increase storage or change out their SIM cards tho.

Popping off the battery cover or removing the external sim tray are not the same as removing the chassis back on the phone. Go ahead and give that a try ifixit style and see what response you get regarding a warranty.

Without question there are some products where the manufacturer doesn't care about certain things. The oil filter in your car, etc. But, for the most part, warranty coverage ends if the product is unsealed or any internal component is changed. Including the PS5, LOL. It's got anti tamper stickers in several places. You can't even remove the fan to clean it. Sony is fine with the expansion bay, but absolutely nothing else. I never thought this would be a debated concept.

The size drive they use inside the console has nothing to do with anything for the consumer. Would not have changed the price they paid for the box. Sony could have used a 2280 in the PS5 also, at least it would have been replaceable and not soldered to the board. But, that wouldn't have any effect on the consumer either.

MS wanted the little hot-swappable cards for external storage and that's what they made. I guess they could always release a little adapter to allow 2280 drives to fit in the expansion slot, but that would just trigger a lot of additional testing and things like that. Seems like they wanted to simplify everything by ensuring that everyone was using the same spec drive. Sony made a different choice.
 
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The Seagate expansion for Xbox series x is $219 fir one terabyte and $399 for two terabytes. Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S 2TB Solid State Drive - NVMe Expansion SSD for Xbox Series X|S (STJR2000400) https://a.co/d/3Ub5INs
Series S + 1 Terabyte of proprietary storage = $518
PS5 DE + 1 Crucial P5 Plus 1TB = $538

Yet people will still defend proprietary storage somehow. Worst deal in gaming by far.
 
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Crayon

Member
I'm looking at that amazon sale and I can only half justify it for my PS5. But I can half justify it for my PC, too.

100% justified katching katching.
 

Trunx81

Member
I also bought the 64GB card. You mean they go bad or just need to redownload?
Can we redownload?
Haven’t accessed the store in ages. Probably yes, but with digital, you never know. Still possible to go the pirates route, though, if that happens. But yeah, these cards tend to go bad.

Regarding the price: I payed 100€ for it, so 30% increase is ok I guess.
 
Not always, they are able to set a minimum standard thanks to proprietary storage. People tend to buy the most cheapest SD cards that are horrendously slow and wonder why their games take longer to load. Using the proprietary Vita cards meant Sony was able to keep control of the card specifications and as to not compromise the gamers experience
Happens all the time on Android, it's why Apple never bothered to put external storage on iOS.

Ah man, this is absolutely something worth bringing into the conversation. Some people are acting like microSD cards in 2012 were what they are today, that's absolutely not the case. I think the fastest card out at the time was UHS-1 and I don't think capacities were that large, either. And I bet they costed quite a lot of money, if you wanted quality ones.

There were probably security measures, as well, that might've informed part of the decision for Sony to go custom with the memory cards on Vita. That doesn't mean they made a good decision with pricing; the pricing was garbage. But I don't think their only intent was to price-gouge and people gotta remember what that type of tech was like in 2011/2012, the economics of it, etc.

Popping off the battery cover or removing the external sim tray are not the same as removing the chassis back on the phone. Go ahead and give that a try ifixit style and see what response you get regarding a warranty.

Without question there are some products where the manufacturer doesn't care about certain things. The oil filter in your car, etc. But, for the most part, warranty coverage ends if the product is unsealed or any internal component is changed. Including the PS5, LOL. It's got anti tamper stickers in several places. You can't even remove the fan to clean it. Sony is fine with the expansion bay, but absolutely nothing else. I never thought this would be a debated concept.

The size drive they use inside the console has nothing to do with anything for the consumer. Would not have changed the price they paid for the box. Sony could have used a 2280 in the PS5 also, at least it would have been replaceable and not soldered to the board. But, that wouldn't have any effect on the consumer either.

MS wanted the little hot-swappable cards for external storage and that's what they made. I guess they could always release a little adapter to allow 2280 drives to fit in the expansion slot, but that would just trigger a lot of additional testing and things like that. Seems like they wanted to simplify everything by ensuring that everyone was using the same spec drive. Sony made a different choice.

I'm just saying, I don't get why this is something to be a focus if we're just talking about using wider-market expansion storage vs. proprietary storage. You don't have to tear a system down to install an SSD, that's including the PS5, so there's nothing to where installing one would normally violate a warranty.

It's kind of a moot point of concern IMHO.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
I'm just saying, I don't get why this is something to be a focus if we're just talking about using wider-market expansion storage vs. proprietary storage. You don't have to tear a system down to install an SSD, that's including the PS5, so there's nothing to where installing one would normally violate a warranty.

It's kind of a moot point of concern IMHO.

Neither do I. I was just pointing out the long standing preference at Xbox. They either don't include a storage upgrade option at all (other than usb) or they offer an external drive in a proprietary enclosure. With HDDs all the 2.5 inch drives ran the same (basically), with NVMe it's easy to see where it saves them a lot of headaches and avoids that asterisk regarding external storage.

Regarding the Vita cards, it doesn't look like there was ever much that special about their performance. This DF article was just a year after launch and the class 10 SD cards had been on the market since 2009. From the looks of it, these were just a cash grab for the most part. 4x the going rate was a really bad markup - basically the same as if the 1TB Xbox drive was selling for $350 or $400.

 
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RCU005

Member
it was obvious that proprietary memory cards killed the PS Vita, but it’s ironic how today Sony could totally sell a proprietary SSD for the PS5 and everybody would be ok and buy it.
 
it was obvious that proprietary memory cards killed the PS Vita, but it’s ironic how today Sony could totally sell a proprietary SSD for the PS5 and everybody would be ok and buy it.

I don’t think everyone would be ok with that especially after the PS4.
 

shaddam

Member
Thankfully I bought an 64gb version when it was "cheap". Still working perfectly. A few months back I bought another vita for thinkering, after freemcboot on ps2 the vita homebrew stuff blew my mind.
 

Gambit2483

Member
it was obvious that proprietary memory cards killed the PS Vita, but it’s ironic how today Sony could totally sell a proprietary SSD for the PS5 and everybody would be ok and buy it.
Iirc Vita practically required extra storage. PS5 at least comes with a decent amount of storage already built in
 

Unknown?

Member
Let’s make an endless number of threads that are all designed in one way or another to take the piss out of and bash Sony, try and be really clever about it, and hope the mods don't realize I'm wasting server-side storage space for these kind of threads.

I remember coming close to making a genuine thread, like really close, then I looked at my username (well, my profile pic). That killed my enthusiasm immediately. Just utterly moronic, my thread would've struggled regardless but it didn't have to be as bad as it is.

---------

Yes, this is a parody. If you want to know of what, look for the clues. They're right in front of you and your Royale with Cheese.
If you want what they were really thinking, it was piracy. 3rd party memory sticks on PSP contributed to cracking that system.
 

SirTerry-T

Member
Vita was/is a fantastic little machine but those memory cards were a lottery, anything over 16gb was a dodgy bet.
Having my 32gb crap out on me was the final straw, did all the hacky stuff and never looked back.
 
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Lognor

Banned
Yep. Such a stupid decision by Sony. And they could have rectified it with a new model after all the blowback but they were stubborn. It's a big reason why the vita was a failure.
 
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