PS Vita: General Discussion

[immergingvirus]

Does anybody have any idea if the digital downloads for the vita games will be cheaper then in the store as they have no packaging to worry about as I think it would be more popular and then would sell more larger memory cards for Sony I think it would be win/win for both consumer and manufacture

[KIERONOO]

They have said 40% cheaper but I wouldn't count on that the Japanese store doesn't have that much off plus game reductions in stores will happen much faster than on ps store Sony won't be able to keep up

[SoySuperBien]

The Japanese games are about £10 cheaper from the store. Uncharted is ¥5,980 (£49.85) at retail and ¥4,900 (£40.85) on the store.

Expect the same kind of difference over here. I hope anyway.

[immergingvirus]

going to be longest 23 days ever i think lol

[kivi95]

DON'T be to sure that the games will be cheaper doh. As they have not confirmed anything.

[AlexAtkinUK]

I certainly hope they are as I very rarely sell my games so re-sale ability is a none issue for me.

Portable gaming has traditionally sucked due to having to carry around a ton of fiddly cartridges that are easy to lose, or you restrict yourself to just the game in the system.  So I would hope Sony will at least try to remain close to retail discount pricing to finally squash that horrible problem, although its obviously still going to happen while we are stuck with 16GB max memory cards as for all we know it may only take a couple of games to fill that.

Also I suspect there will be few games I would be willing to spend more than £30 on as given a choice I will almost always choose a home console version over Vita, except when I can have both (ie Vita/PS3 cross platform bundles). 

However good Vita is, its not going to be the same experience as playing on a 47" TV with 7.1 sound so its going to depend a lot on the type of game, if it has multiplayer and if I know anyone else with a Vita I can play against.  I will continue to prioritise home console and primarily Xbox as all my friends are on there, unless Sony offer me something really special on the Vita version - which they are doing with the cross platform titles as hopefully that will mean someone can play on my PS3 while I vs them on the Vita.

As an aside, if the game cartridges really are flash memory as suggested we are long past the days of holding onto physical games for retro gaming too.  Flash memory starts to fail after 10 years unless you rewrite it so games on your memory card theoretically can outlive the life of the retail versions, because you can wipe the card and re-download which will reset that 10 year lifespan, something you won't be able to do to the retail card.  The only disadvantage depends on how the DRM functions and if it will effectively disable your games once Sony stop supporting it, but of course few people will be thinking that long term anyway.