Last November during my annual Black Friday barrage on video game deals, I bit on Amazon's Gold Box deal of a snazzy white-colored PlayStation Vita. The purchase was absolutely worth it, and I love being an impulse adopter of a portable device that deserves more love by gamers. There's just one simple problem with it, and it's easy for Sony to fix.
The white Vita was bundled with Assassin's Creed: Liberation, a code to download PlayStation All Stars: Battle Royale, either one or three free months of PlayStation Plus, and a four-gigabyte memory card all for...I believe it was $180. That was an absolute steal, and do not regret the purchase one bit even if it wasn't completely necessary.
I already had an Android smartphone that had plenty of games to play, and I even have a tablet that makes me neglect my phone. But there's something about Sony's portable device that draws me to it. Sure, the buttons are a little small and things can get a little uncomfortable in the heat of the moment in certain games, but it overall feels great and the battery life is incredibly long for how powerful these games are.
Playing another version of Uncharted and Assassin's Creed are almost reason enough to get the device. But there's something that's incredibly nagging - the small amount of storage space given to people who have the PlayStation Plus subscription.
There's no debate that any gamer that has PlayStation should get the subscription. The deals and free games pay off for themselves. What everyone's issue will be is the lack of storage space, especially with the hefty price tag on Vita's memory cards, and Sony's ignorance of even cutting their biggest owners a deal.
No knockoff cards are available as these microSD cards are Vita-exclusive. They must be special; it's about $45-50 to take a 16 GB card home, and around $80-90 to double that.
That's highway robbery. It's already a struggle to always download from the PlayStation Store. Every time I buy a new game like this week's BlazBlue freebie, it freezes when trying to start the download and I have to power down the system and restart.
I've opted to copy games back-and-forth to a computer - even with a 500 GB PS3, I avoid holding the entire Vita collection on there. It's easier, but the Vita will not keep game saves when deleting a game or app. Now there's the hassle of making sure everything backed up to the online storage. Without that, you'd have to always copy the game/app to the computer before deleting it.
Since BlazBlue is a 3.3 GB giant, I have to delete damn near everything on the card to bring it on. There's no reason to take off Jetpack Joyride or Retro City Ransom to get a game on a memory card.
For loyal fans that have bought into the PS+ subscription, there should be a discount on memory cards. Even for a limited time. Give a two-week sale and slice the cards in half. It's already ridiculous these cards are this highly priced, and it comes off as Sony trying to recoup their losses from the die-hard gamers.
Get the message out; talk to Sony on Twitter or Facebook about the issues with transferring games. It's almost frustrating enough for even myself to just cancel the subscription altogether - it's rough enough to deal with the user interface of PS Store 2.0.
There's more than just an inconvenience factor; a lot of time is lost if game saves aren't backed up and the time it takes to transfer big games over and over.
Either that, or Sony needs to start sending out their Vita games on cartridges. I'll take either one at this point.
[Photo credit: Flickr/Javier Dominguez Ferreiro]
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