Hackers dump Vita memory cards

It seems some PS Vita hackers are trying to dump and crack the PS Vita's infamous proprietary memory cards.

[JackOfAllBlades]

Definitely interesting, not that I personally have a use for modifying my memory card

[ramiuk1]

the reason i wont buy one is memory price.
can get 64gb usb for £13 uk,sometimes less yet sont want triple that

[superchiller]

Your loss, sadly.

[randomass171]

His loss in spending less money? That's a weird thing to call a loss.

[ramiuk1]

@superchiller it kind of is my loss,but noit as much as a loss for me as it is Sony imo.

the price they charge is too much,i would love a vita but i wont beripped off overthings like this,the same reason i will never buy DLC.

i have over a years worth of vita games ready but i wont spend £140 on a handheld and then another £60 on a memory card.
they have the security on a standard flash card yet charging too much for it,memory cards are a reason alot of folk i know wont invest for.

shame as it would be great to use with my ps4

[Joey_Leone]

Remember the PSP? Sandisk was the best choice from Sony,i think the reason why the vita isn't doing so well is because of this, it's to expensive so nobody is going to buy it.

[guitarded77]

I love my Vita, but yeah, the memory is too damn high (in the rent is too damn high guy's voice). I've echoed that since launch. Proprietary cards make hacking much more difficult, but also drive prices way up. So hackers have some blame in this too. I could fill up a 64gb card in a heartbeat. Wish they had offered come huge internal memory.

[Jonny5isalive]

not that big of a loss really. There are some good games to play on vita, but once your done there are not any more coming besides GR 2. Unless you like cheapo turnbased school girl JRPGs. Then the vita has the most games ever.

Personally Im fine with a 8gb, I bought some games on a card and then delete games I dont play. but by now its not like I plan on getting tons more games for it anymore and have no desire to invest more into a device that has been ignored by sony since e3 2012 right after its launch.

[GenericNameHere]

I just want cheaper and bigger 3rd party memory cards :(

I bought a 64GB card at GameStop a couple of weeks ago, and I'm already down to 12GBs. Those PS+ and PS1 games stack up really quick. If a 3rd-party is able to release a 100GB card for $50, I'd buy one immediately.

[NewMonday]

I do fine with a 16gb card, I just keep the 8-10 games that I most likely want and store the rest on my 500gb PS3.

[PinkEye]

I thought 64GB cards were only in Japan...

[Skate-AK]

It is. I am not sure what he is talking about. Maybe it was a refurbished card that someone ordered from Japan.

[AntsPai]

I don't know, I got mine of amazon uk, 70 quid it set me back, I've been out of space though for months. I'd easily pay 100 for a 120gb

[crusf]

Maybe he lives in Japan.

[superchiller]

I bought a 64gb Vita memory card for $85 shipped (to the U.S.) from superufo. Replaced my almost-full 32gb card, and now I'm set for a while. Will use the 32gb card on the PlayStation TV when it comes out later this year.

[ssjkiet]

You can buy them from Amazon..........

[DarkHeroZX]

You can import them. I imported mine.

[rustyspoon80]

Hmm, I'd be happy if this resulted in lower price memory cards. I dont want this to be a resurgence of the piracy issues the PSP had. The Vita is struggling enough with large games, lets not take away all the reasons for companies to make games for it.

[TimeSkipLuffy]

if the vita gets hacked its bad for devs but it could boost hardware sales for Sony.

[Haki1112]

not like they making games for the vita anyway. Still loving X/X-2 on the vita though

[TimeSkipLuffy]

There are a lot of indie devs releasing their stuff on Vita. I wasn't talking about Sony when I mentioned Vita software ;D

[nix]

i need not pirate games. PS+ is giving enough free games to me. q:

[Soulscare]

Idk why you get disagrees tbh. No one loves their Vita more than me, I play it every day but you're lying to yourself if you disagree with Haki1112.

Edit - On topic, I probably would do this personally. I'd still pay for all my game, but I would use this for language learning purposes. E.g, I'd buy Gravity Rush first in English, so that the devs and everyone else involved have my cash, but then I'd pirate the Japanese version. Its the only fair way to show your support and avoid ridiculous import fees. (Seriously, I payed £55 for the Japanese version of Final Fantasy X HD on PS3, now FedEx want to charge me a further £30 for importing it... Ridiculous.)

[kingPoS]

The think I understand why Sony went with a single profile on the Vita and why have to format to swap between accounts. It kinda makes sense.

Gateway MT6706 2008

[MegaRay]

The only reason stopping me from getting a Vita is single account-thing. I have multiple accounts i dont mind using only 2 of them but only 1 seems greedy on Sony's part.

[kingPoS]

Sony 'DID' learn a hard lesson with the PSP & PS3, after all, wouldn't it make sense for them to keep that from happening again for as long as possible.

Gateway MT6706 2008

[Activemessiah]

I think if this happens, the sales of Vita would rise.

[r21]

In the worse way possible.

[drizzom]

Vita sales would rise. But third party devs will never touch the now unsafe hardaware again.

[welly300]

Sony need to wake up this is the main reason the vita struggles its going to get worse as main dev games dry up and we have to rely on indi games.

[ninjahunter]

Kinda hard to be mad at hackers when its the guys who are getting hacked that are screwing people over.

[SpadeX]

Sony isn't getting hacked...

[kingPoS]

-its the guys who are getting hacked that are screwing people over.

Umm.. wut! How is that so? Are they screwing them hackers by forcing them to buy Sony's proprietary memory card. Yes! yes they are, that's the whole point isn't it, to help keep unlicensed code off the platform.

Or am I wrong.

Gateway MT6706 2008

[ninjahunter]

They are screwing consumers over by forcing apon them memory cards that perform slower than the competition while still costing 4+ times as much money. I would say "well just dont buy a memory card", but you just cannot own a vita without buying a memory card.

[mohuzas]

Huh, 3DS uses standard SD cards and it isn't hacked even though it was out longer :P

[Spotie]

That didn't even make sense.

[Sheed]

This is kinda cool, I think this could help the vita. I know a lot if people who bought the PSP purely because of all the incredible mods it had at the time.
I never put my PSP down because it was an emulation powerhouse.

[LOOK_AT_THIS_I]

Incredible mods? Really?

Downloaded games free from the net was the purpose of that. changing pictures and icons is far from incredible.

[Sheed]

At the time, it was pretty cool.
Universal remote.
Use it as a spare computer monitor.
It was also a wireless game controller too which I still personally use til this day.

At the time I was 12, and it was pretty incredible to me since prior to the PSP my only soft modding experience was action replay on my GBA.

[slasaru01]

Psp emulators stuck in the development for 10 years and more now. Plus, i remember it ran some SNES games awfully. So with android devices available, PSP is no longer the best emulation device.

[lnfiniteLoop]

considering Sony has more or less said its ditching its own first party development for the Vita... not a surprise people will want to crack this now... personally I am not happy with the way Sony is pushing indie games more on their systems...

[TheGrimReaper0011]

oh god yes!
I hate the expensive memory cards that the vita requires

[slasaru01]

But you got games for free. That makes a good balance, no?

[gamerfan0909]

Sony's marketing of the vita is a head scratcher for me. Why charge people huge amounts of money for memory cards? Why not provide a decent one in the box and allow third party memory cards. Piracy to me is a non issue because people are going to get around to hacking it anyway.

[fullmetal297]

Because like all companies, Sony wants to make a profit and because they are the sole owners of this memory format they can.

[kneon]

I doubt any third party would care about making memory cards for the vita, it's a tiny market compared to the overall memory card market. It's just not worth it.

And that's also the reason the cards are expensive, too little volume. They could have gone with a standard format at a much lower cost but then it would have been hacked in days rather than years.

[fullmetal297]

@kneon
The only way I can see this memory format taking off is if the memory card unit was used in other devices such as digital cameras and prices were more competitive with the standard SD card. Until those changes happen, it gonna take in the PS Vita.

[gamerfan0909]

Over charging people for memory cards leads to people looking at your device as an overpriced piece of hardware. Sony doesn't help their cause whatsoever.

[jmac53]

It boggles my mind they don't make the memory cards cheaper. The more space you have the more likely you are to download and pay for more games. It don't want to be constantly monitoring my space and deleting and redownloading games.

[kingPoS]

Third party memory cards is exactly how the PSP was hacked. Literally anyone with a card adapter could gain an understanding of the file structure. Sony, for obvious reasons doesn't want to share that market, if they did, we'd see card readers from 3rd party venders pop up all over the place, which is what they DON'T want happening. Sony is only manufacturing those cards for use on the Vita/PSTV, hence the high price.

Gateway MT6706 2008

[fullmetal297]

But you forgetting that the memory stick duo was also memory format exclusively owned by Sony. The memory card was not the reason the PSP got hacked. It was because the the original 1.0 firmware did not have any security precaution to run unsigned code. So anyone could literally write a program for the PSP and run it with no troubles at all.

[XiSasukeUchiha]

Thanks Hinata for an good article for me to read!

[Lord_Kaname]

Hinata submitted the article but was written by wololo. She shouldn't get credit for other peoples work.

[sanosukegtr123]

The memory cards are too small for those prices.

[hiawa23]

Interesting. I got a 64 gb card, and that is more than enough space. Majority of that are movies and adult stuff, and since Sony or very few other devs are making Vita games I guess I don't to have to worry about filling it with games.

[jegheist2014]

if they hack vita more devs will be stupid jump on making games.

once cat gets out bag though thats when devs need to bust down make games that r strictly hard to solo make them more friendly online.

once some hacked vita goeso nline give the idiotss banhammer.

ive never said this in history of mankind hack the vita plz so its boosts hardware sales we might get years worth of triple aaa games beofre anyone notices.

odds of noone noticing specially devs is slim to none

[Revengeance]

It was only a matter of time...

[ziggurcat]

There's no reason to be promoting this garbage here. Hacking doesn't benefit anyone, and should never receive any attention. All this will result in is further restrictions later on down the line.

[MajorGecko]

good that will teach sony to try to rip us off on memory cards everyone saying sony isnt screwing them over isnt gaming on a VITA with low memory because prices are too high

[MultiConsoleGamer]

Still a long way from being cracked.

[Jiiiiiiin]

Oh thanx steve!!!

[OUROSMAG]

I still want a vita, and almost purchased one last year as a birthday gift to myself, and then I saw the price of the Memory card and passed and bought a tablet instead.

[ENZIPH3R]

@ramiuk1 the same reason i wont buy a vita even though i have a year worth of games

[iceman600]

lol like the vita is worth hacking, because you have to have games worthy of hacking it in the first place.

[setsunatenshi]

@mohuzas

The 3ds has been hacked for about a year now, so...

[Buzz7S]

Good. I dunno how anybody can buy a memory card which is almost as much as a PS Vita and justify the cost.

Hopefully this leads to third-party cards. Screw Sony and their horrendous support for the PS Vita. No wonder why it is a dying handheld.

[paul-p1988]

This is just what the Vita needs, to be pirated into oblivion just like the PSP.

I hope this memory dump is a lost cause because I want the possibility of playing some new games on it for a few years, unlike the last few years of the PSP's life cycle where I just ended up playing old games as all the dev's had abandoned it due to the ridiculously high piracy rate...