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RIP PlayStation Vita 64 GB Memory Card


On 10/04/2022 at 09:43 PM by NSonic79

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It’s the one constant when you have retro tech in your possession. Be it simple PC hardware to retro game systems, something will eventually give out. Some last longer than others depending on their build quality. I had a recent care last month when I thought my One Chip SNES decided not to boot up any carts I put into it. Had to go as far as to opening it up and give the pin connector and good scrubbing down. Thankfully the pin connector wasn’t soldered to the motherboard.

But as expected sometime during the Octoberween month I usually have something die on me. One year it was my Xbox 360 Elite model from the RRoD. Another year it was my PSP model 1001 model due to a botched update via PC. This year I’m once again hit by this curse but this death hurts a little too much.

Given that the PlayStation Vita is a sought after piece of portable gaming tech it’s been a bit hard trying to find systems, games and accessories at a decent price. I was lucky to find my PS Vita Slim for a cheap sum, with some games to boot, but given it didn’t have a memory card did hamper my plans to enjoying gaming on the go on that format. I did have an 8 GB memory card from my PlayStation TV but I didn’t want to swap it given it was being used at the time. So instead I shopped to see if I could buy the biggest, official, memory card for the PS Vita I could find so I wouldn’t need to upgrade again when the inevitable happened and I ran out of space for all my digital titles.  

Cited as one of the reason why the PS Vita didn’t take off like it did, Sony decided to have a whole new memory card format than stick with their prior Memory Stick. And since no one bothered to make third party generic PS Vita memory cards, like how SanDisk did with the PSP, buying a memory card during the height of the PS Vita’s release was a big investment. Since I bought my system during the end of the Vita’s life cycle I was lucky to find a max size 64 GB memory card for under $100. I ended up buying used because I couldn’t bring myself to spend $120 on a CIB.

Even at a $100 plus shipping it was a hard pilled to shallow but I got it and enjoyed it for a good number of years. It came in extra handy when I needed to download some choice PSP and PSone digital titles, that were backwards compatible with the Vita, when I ran out of room for some titles on my PSP itself. I had hoped it would last me a good while given I didn’t play on the PS Vita as often as I did. I mostly just wanted to have them all saved on my system and easily accessible for when I wanted to play at any given time.

I ran into trouble a few days ago when I was downloaded Minecraft Vita Edition onto my system digitally. It downloaded halfway then I got a “download failed” message. I tried to access other game icons on my home screen only to get the warning message that the game file was “corrupted” and I was prompted to either redownload the corrupted titles, delete the said files, or just reformat the entire memory card. Redownloading failed, the files wouldn’t delete off my memory card and I kept getting error messages saying my memory card couldn’t be formatted. Researching the error code lead me to what I had feared: reseat the memory card 2-3 times and try again. IF that failed to put the system into safe mode and try to format it from there.

As you can guess all attempts have failed.

It breaks my heart knowing my pricy memory card finally decided to bite the big one. All that money wasted and now me with no high capacity memory card for my PlayStation Vita. Sure I could “mod” the system and use a SD card adapter but I want to hold on to my system as long as I can given how much I’ve invested into my PSN Store’s digital games library. So far now I’m back to using the (ugh) 8 GB memory card I used with my PS TV, since I’m not using it at the moment. I’ve begun researching how much it’ll cost to replace my dead 64 GB memory card. Depending where I shop it’ll cost me around $120 to $160 for a used card. I could try to buy a Chinese knock off model but I’m not sure I’d trust it in my system. It’s why I never bought the unofficial 64 GB memory sticks for my PSP. It’s bad enough my memory card died, I wouldn’t want my handheld to die too due to some weird error using an off brand, unofficial accessory.

RIP 64 GB memory card. You will be missed. You served me well. And you cost me a pretty penny just to reduce the need to swap out smaller memory cards for digital games. Guess I just might bite the bullet and invest in smaller 32 or 16 GB models. Because I can tell you an 8 GB, and I don’t even want to think on the 4 GB, simply won’t cut it for me.

Ta-ta

“N”


 

Comments

SanAndreas

10/05/2022 at 01:33 AM

I think I have a 16GB memory card that I shared between my Vita handheld and the Vita TV. I bought a few PS1 and PSP classics, but didn't invest heavily in the Vita otherwise. While i got it for Tales of Hearts R, the only real draw for it from my standpoint ended up being Falcom's games, and those are now available in better form on the Switch.

Part of why Sony used proprietary memory cards was to try and turn a profit on the Vita, which is something they couldn't do if you could just buy an Onn SD card for cheap at Walmart. The Vita was really over-engineered for the market it was competing in, and because of that, the Vita was a loss-leader despite being expensive on the consumer end of things. The razor-and-blades model employed by Sony and Microsoft, and tentatively attempted by Nintendo with the 3DS and Wii U, can really cause a company to hemorrhage red ink if the "blades" don't cover the cost of the "razor." In the past, PlayStation and Xbox have both wiped out their entire product line's cumulative historical profits when the "blades" didn't justify the razor. Sony tried to push Vita memory cards as both a "blade" and as a "razor" to encourage digital buying. I think my PS TV cost $70 brand-new, the memory card cost $40. 

That's why Nintendo uses older tech, something they did in the 1980s as well. They want to sell their products at mass-market prices and still turn a profit. 

NSonic79

10/06/2022 at 11:47 PM

Either way it's a missed opporunity. if they worked on it better it could've been a sure fire hit like the PSP. Look how the Steam Deck is handling as well as the Switch. I just wished the memory cards didn't cost so much now. almost makes me want to "experiment" on my PS Vita and TV soon 

daftman

10/05/2022 at 02:36 PM

Oh man, that stinks. As a Vita owner, I understand the pain of buying memory for that thing. When rumors first surfaced of the Vita store shutting down, I bought a 32 GB card right away and I am glad I did. They really jumped in price when Sony made the news official. I can't quite fit all my stuff on there but it was a good chance to cull the digital collection of some PS+ games I will never actually play.

I hope you find something to replace it with. I'd love to do the jailbreak to use SD cards but I'm too worried about messing up my system. Fingers crossed my 32 GB card keeps working.

NSonic79

10/06/2022 at 11:49 PM

I thought I was all set when the annnouncement of the store shutting down was coming. Thankfully we have a repreive so I can see on getting some replacements. I went in hard digitally on PS Vita content given the cross-buy promotions between PS3, PS4 and PSP titles. I even used it to store some PSP games since my PSP is maxed out in memory to. Stilld debating on 32 GB or 64 GB but i'll get something soon!

SanAndreas

10/05/2022 at 03:50 PM

I haven't had a lot of memory cards just crap out on me. The last time I remember that happening was when I was using third party memory cards on my PS1 and lost my FF9 saves on my first playthrough of that game, after which I stuck strictly with Sony-branded memory cards for both PS1 and PS2. I guess that Sony made the PSV memory cards proprietary enough that third parties didn't bother with PSV cards.

NSonic79

10/06/2022 at 11:50 PM

This has been a first for me to. Never had one die out on me like that. I had hoped it would last longer. Guess I didn't luck out this time. 

KnightDriver

10/05/2022 at 04:07 PM

I loved my PS Vita that had the OLED screen, but I never found enough games I liked to get for it. Thus I didn't play it much and then finally traded it. I miss that thing though. It had such potential.

What they did with memory cards was totally rediculous. Pricey, proprietary cards don't encourage digital buying, quite the opposite. There was no way I was going to pay $1 per GB or more when I could get memory for half that price for other devices. I never understood that strategy. It totally backfired for me. I never got more memory and so never downloaded anything. 

NSonic79

10/06/2022 at 11:52 PM

I wish I could get an OLED. they sound like a dream, moreso now that we are seeing Switch systems with OLED. I knew i'd be going digital with my Vita given how its hard to find CIB games that don't cost an arm and a leg. Sometimes it's cheaper to go digital for certain titles. And if those titles find their way one day on the PS5 as a possible backwards compatible option, I'd be down for that. 

KnightDriver

10/07/2022 at 09:26 AM

I got the OLED Switch. I feel like I shouldn't have now though because I really don't use it on the go at all. I totally want to replace my TV with a OLED TV though. Oh yes. The Vita sold me on OLED. When I saw how good Muramasa: Demon Blade looked on that screen, I was hooked. 

Right now I'm going strictly physical copies with my retro gaming. Only in certain cases where the game is too darn expensive, like Chrono Trigger, will I go digital or find a rerelease on another system or in a collection. 

Super Step Contributing Writer

10/06/2022 at 04:57 PM

I'm already annoyed my PS5 doesn't have enough memory for more than a handful of AAA games at a time, and I have a 2TB hard drive for all my PS4 games already. I can't imagine what losing memory on a handheld is like. 

SanAndreas

10/06/2022 at 09:48 PM

At the rate things are going, AAA games are going to require their own dedicated SSD. 

I propose that console and PC manufacturers design future SSDs so they can be plugged into SATA slots on the exterior. We could call this new storage format something like, say, "cartridges."

NSonic79

10/06/2022 at 11:54 PM

I may just give up on new gen and just stick to retro as this point. It was bad enough they decided not to do compression last gen. I miss the Xbox 360/PS3 era of gaming. 

NSonic79

10/06/2022 at 11:53 PM

At this rate I may just give up on the PS5 and Series X/S if this is how the memory is going to be handled. I can't keep up. 

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