August 2005 I run over to Gamestop after birthing classes with my wife. The mission: Retrieve a PSP memory card for a decent price.
I wish I could say that story was a happy one. My pregnant wife with swollen feet was wanting to make it fast. It was the first time I opted to buying something online. The prices of memory cards were outragous. You could find a 2 Gig stick online for $80.00 + shipping from newegg.com.
The disdain was overwhelming but the prices quickly dropped as third party cards, and larger sizes were released. Then we had to worry about buying a Pro Duo and it not being the size advertised or they wouldnt work properly or slower due to being knock offs of knock offs i.e. "Fake memory cards".
We ball those factors together and then throw in a little piracy. Now you suddenly have issues you (as a hardware developer) need to address next time around. Money lost is money lost. I been around enough repairing consoles and being ask about modding to tell you there are so many more people out there downloading pirated games than we like to admit. There are sites dedicated to that exact thing.
Now we are upon that next round that Sony had to prepare for. How does one make sure this system wasn't hacked as easily as the last? One would suggest using a hard drive. But that would lead to later revisions with larger sizes at the same cost and alienate our base again. Using the existing formats aside from MS Pro Duo would result in Sony shelling out more money to use the format.
Many people are upset over the choice Sony has made in regards to the Vita. I can somewhat understand the frustrations with the master of BetaMax. You would think a company would learn. It took a missing piece of ear to make Holyfield learn his lesson. I guess it takes more than financial raping to learn for some.
Instead I find people upset over the pricing range. I look at it all together and think "Did these guys forget the PSP? or did that happen to only me?"
I dont know if it's just me, but my irritation was the proprietary format. Not the price. All things considered I dont think there is anything wrong with any of the moves made. I look at it as a company trying to keep the unit secure. Given that Vita memory is a new format I thought the prices would have been higher.
Sons of Valhalla is an exceptional 2D side-scroller action game that challenges players' strategic approach and skills management.
The armadillo returns.
I personally do remember Infogrames in the years prior to merger. They really did have a portfolio that stuck out and I enjoyed. I wonder what value they see in reviving it now though?
Sony is apparently experimenting with an AI tool that will play the game for you when you are grinding away. A PlayStation patent for “auto-play” mode would simulate your gameplay style in certain environments and apply them to skip that section completely. This technology would likely be built directly into the cloud-based PlayStation Network and be a new feature that subscribers would have access to.
Hah! Either will never happen or publishers will charge you to use this AI. This concept would only exacerbate the problem we already have with GaaS.
doesnt that concept already exist tho?
buy dlc to get a ahead in games? money, weapon and exp dlc come to mind but yeh. one more thing for them.to potentially charge for.
Usually, for GaaS/Seasonal games, you'll have to perform actions to earn specific in-game currency to buy things for events. Then they sell the currency with real cash or a third-currency to then buy the in-game currency items (it's honestly truly bloated to hide that they're cheating you out of money). With this, they'll just give you items if you do something 50 times or the like and then charge you to have the game play it for you. It's better, right? No currency shenanigans, just play the game and we reward you! But, the truth is they'll inflate the amount of times you have to play through content just to get the same thing.
Why?
Why not just remove the Grindy part?
I hope it's not an excuse to make them worse, but optional if you pay
This IGN blogger mode will allow 'reviewers' to play games like rest of us.
I will never forget watching GamingBolts spoiler video for Horizon FW and realizing they never played it. Made me wonder if they play games at all.
Reminds me of those 24 hours races in gran Turismo 4 having your PlayStation play for you.
But realistically if you have to use any of these for Grundy games there's a bigger underlying problem of the game not respecting your time in the first place.
Grind for game length is a real problem in my view
Yep, I remember the stupid-high prices for the Pro Duo sticks, and it was annoying that you couldn't use a standard SD card. What's even more annoying is that Sony has dropped their own proprietary Pro Duo stick in favor of a NEW proprietary stick. Any word on what the advantages are? Does it make your Vita piss liquid gold? No? So then why do we need a new format?
The complaints about the price...I can sympathize, not just because the prices are high but because it's a NEW FREAKIN' FORMAT. Why, Sony? Looking at Amazon, I can get a Pro Duo 4, 8, and 16 Gig for <$10, $15, and $30 respectively. Care to explain why a 4 Gig Vita stick costs more than three times as much as a 4 Gig PSP stick?
Hell I remember Ps2 memory cards were insanely priced when they first came out and they were only 8mb but people forget. For my psp when I had one I just bought a 3rd party 4gb for fairly cheap (admittedly years after launch) after that I just bought an adapter to use micro-sd cards which were pretty cheap and I already had a few micro-sd cards so it was all good.
I don't like how they're using a proprietary memory format though, I just hope they allow 3rd party companies to make cheaper ones in time.
We still haven't gotten any official word from Sony about the NA price for the cards. So writing about how expensive it is,is pointless. B***h about it when we actually know the right price.
I'm kind of wondering if the reason the Vita itself is only $250 is because the damn cards are so expensive.
I consider myself very anti-piracy, and this... this I am going to have to stop and think about when I get a Vita.
I'm miffed about the price of memory sure. 32gb adds another 100 bucks. But I'm sure after 2 weeks with the thing I'll forget about it, and when good games keep rolling in like I hope they do, it'll seem worth it.
My only question now is to 3G or not 3G?