How this correction to a factually inaccurate story also ended up critical, I have no idea. "Yeah ok we were totally wrong about that factory reset thing guys but still FUCK SONY!!!!"

*facepalm*

If you play games from different regions, get the 4gb memory card and stop acting all butthurt

and now the vita with fail good job sony

It's like Sony wants people to jailbreak this thing...

Ahem...

CALLED IT!

Now where's my prize?

I'm not sure, one profile per memory card unless factory resetting? Yeah, I think that actually still warrants a 'fuck you', if only for spectacularly poor design.

wow did you even proofread this before posting it

@Tristix - Even with the correction, it still isn't exactly an improvement. So you CAN have multiple accounts, so long as you buy Sony's overpriced proprietary media. Not an improvement, it might as well be region-locked anyway.

Hey Jim, Nintendo only allows one account on their platforms, causing you to create another account for each platforms, meaning you have to pay more, and Microsoft sells REALLY EXPENSIVE harddrives and allows you to create different accounts, but will cost $60/year if you want to play online and don't take advantage of Live deals. The PSP also had one accounts per console, but only made a big deal about it with Vita...

Yeah, Sony is the only company that cares about money... -_-

@TSP

It's always something, dude. The crying in that last article was about how "WAAAAH WE'LL HAVE TO BUY A SECOND VITA!!!" and so now that it's clear how wrong that is, we waste no time whatsoever shifting gears to "WAAAAAH WE'LL HAVE TO BUY A SECOND MEMORY CARD!!!"

I mean... come on. Don't people ever get sick of looking for reasons to complain? It went from an extra $250 to an extra $30. 'WAAAAAAH BUT IT SHOULD BE AN EXTRA $0!!!' Fine. Whatever. None of us knows how the damned thing even works and if that's even possible but fine. Whatever. Can't we tone down the rhetoric proportionately though? I mean fuck guys, take a breath between rants.

@LsTr Of SmG
I would consider a poor desgin to be with, One download, per one console and completely region-locked despite using non-propriety SD cards. And the need to buy an entirely new region-specific console just so you can access and play games from other downloadshops of other region/countries.

@Oishidesu

Don't you dare try to bring common sense into this bash-Sony-circlejerk!

So, another reason to buy more egregiously overpriced memory cards? Sony, as a company, really needs to come into the 21st century and quit prioritizing the proliferation of proprietary formats over everything else. You would think more than a decade of losing ground in damn near every last department within the company, to the point that their most profitable venture is now life insurance, would convince them that maybe they should quit allowing the "Sony Ego" to run the goddamned show.

I want a Vita pretty bad, but honestly, I'll be waiting till the memory is as dirt cheap as it should be before I buy one. Maybe, once the 3DS gets its "Lite" version (we all know it will), I'll be so busy with that that I could hold off on a Vita till much later.

@OneRed consider this. Just to use a different account on the 3DS you need another 3DS instead of a SD card.

Is it just me, or is the Vita starting to seem like it's more about selling you memory cards than it is about selling you games?

Given Sony's track record, I feel it's a valid question.

Perhaps the community will offer their feedback.

@Tristix - We get it. You're willing to bend over backwards just to have the most stillborn piece of hardware ever concieved.

We live in an age of SD cards and Cloud storage - both of which are things Sony's competitors don't heap massive restrictions on. The 3DS, smartphones and tablets come with on-board memory, Vita doesn't.

Hell, 3DS did the unthinkable this week and allows transferring of games between one registered 3DS and another. Vita can only kind of do that now as of the Nov. 18 PSN EULA revisions, but if you have a PS3 and a Vita tied to your PSN account, that's all you get on that account.

Sony just keeps taking away more and asking for more in its place. I wanted a Vita, but I don't need one that badly now that its now just an exercise in pure greed.

@Oishidesu

I don't recall Jim, or really anyone, being too happy about all that other shit either.

@Tristrix

I'm not sure you understand the definition of rhetoric, consider you only ever use it in its negative light. Overusing, and misusing the word is, in itself, pretty awful rhetorical strategy. Irony.

If you want a little perspective, though, I'm sure there are people as tired of seeing you complain about every reaction you don't agree with as you are reading others complain. The master of irony.

"the most stillborn piece of hardware ever concieved. "

Lol. wow. Yeah. I think this sums it up, right here.

L. O. L.

@KwikPwn
Well, Vita would be sold for a lost for years. So sony actually stacks more loses for every PSV sold. Selling more memory cards at profit could offset that. So yes to memory cards. As for games i thought there are plenty at launch so i think that they want to sell more if it too.

Yep, super greedy. Because you know the capabilities of these cards and *KNOW* that they warrant being lower versus competition.

I'll bet you think Intel's next processor is too expensive because it's not as cheap as an Athlon X64...

I'm only saying that you're reacting to a piece of hardware you know next to nothing about other than "It looks like these other things that are way cheaper. FU SONY!"

I've said it before and I'll say it again: should these cards match top-tier speeds of SD cards, they are cheaper than SD offerings. If they do not, complaints on price are likely warranted.

@IonOnion
"consider this. Just to use a different account on the 3DS you need another 3DS instead of a SD card."

Let's kill this one before it spreads any further:

No, you don't need another 3DS to get another account because the 3DS does not use user accounts.

To buy something on a different region you just change region in your system and accept the TOS again.

Funds are tied to the region, and are not lost if you change and then come back. Everything you buy is tied to the system and works.

So, not the same thing.

Hey Jim, consider this. Sony is the only one that still allows region-importing. You want to import Teenage Ninja Girls with Absurdly large breasts on your American or UK 3DS? Well, fook you! You will also need to buy a 3DS from Japan! You only have a 360 and want to play FFXIII-2 next week? Well, fook you too! Buy another 360 from Japan!! Hey, want to import Kingdom Hearts: BBS Final Mix on your PSP, Gravity Daze on your Vita, or FFVersusTimeXIII on your PS3? Ok, shipping will start soon.

I still don't see why people still hate Sony this Gen. Yeah, the $600 launch price was heartbreaking, but grow the fuck up, people. Sony is now recovering, jeez! You must first make mistakes to be successful.

Yeah, this whole PS Vita clusterfuck is just making me hold off on buying a Vita. I'll get one eventually, but after

A) The inevitable price drop

B) Waiting to see what software is available for the system.

@GoofierBrute

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_Vita_games

I dunno how long you might have to wait on a price drop for it, though. If I understand correctly, it's already selling at a loss, so I wouldn't look for a price drop for quite a while. I could be wrong, just sharing my general impression.

Does the 3ds even NEED profiles. With only a couple of downloadable games worth playing, and street fighter 4 seeming like the only worthwhile online game for the system. Getting mad at 3DS for not having multiple profiles seems a little odd. Now the Vita on the other hand is charging headlong into the future where content licenses and user restrictions rule, and if that's the case they can't be pulling this kind of shit.

@El Conrado

If this is true that is potentially really awesome. Do you know if the downloads are IP locked (ala Microsoft's Games on Demand), and if it's the same case for the Wii?

Why does it seem like Sony is going out of their way to make things more complicated? What logical reason could there be for this?

@Tristix

That's a very long list, and while there are games that are on there that I want, I'm a little hesitant to get board with this, on account of the fact that the 3DS had a lot of promising titles before it launched.

@GoofierBrute

Indeed, but there's actual release dates on these. I count 13 launch titles coming out Feb 22nd. I dunno what your expectations are but personally, that's what made up MY mind to buy one at launch. I consider that more than enough to keep me busy for a while.

Well although this sucks, it means you're not completely locked out of PSN accounts of other regions. It's much cheaper to buy an extra memory card, then it is to buy another system. Hell, I'm going to have to buy a Japanese 3DS because some of the games I want will never make it out of there. It's still region free, even if it's complicated region free.

@RenegadePanda

In short, Sony is far too compartmentalized for its own good, read a great article on it not too long ago. Sony has seen its market share drop in nearly every segment across the board, and it is, for the most part, being blamed on the fact that Sony is so compartmentalized that nothing they do is streamlined. They also, in many cases, see each other as possible threats, as it was brought up that Sony did not go forward with the Walkman answer to the blooming MP3 player market because the guys in the CD department did not want to become obsolete.

Everything is overcomplicated because nothing is being streamlined across departments. Sony has been hemorrhaging money for years now, something we don't hear about often when focusing on their gaming ventures.

Handhelds are typically meant for a single person as apposed to consoles. I would figure most people only have one PSN account because there isn't really a need for more unless you are an extreme hardcore ultra mega gamer who needs to play some Japan or Europe only game. So this really doesn't matter to the general public and Sony knows they can do this because if you are that hardcore of a gamer, they know you will shell out the money for that second memory card.

Wait, I misspoke. It wasn't that the people in charge of physical media at Sony didn't want their jobs to become obsolete, it was that they didn't want the CD itself to become obsolete. They were responsible for the creation of the CD back in the late 70s, and didn't want their baby to die.

Wonder why the UMD was invented? Gotta do something with those presses when the music industry starts to shift away from CDs, and your job starts to lose relevance.

While entirely speculation on my part, I would not at all be surprised to learn the only reason a proprietary memory card is being used with the Vita is that the people responsible for the Memory Stick want another crack at relevance, considering even Sony products that once only had Mem Stick compatibility are using SD cards now. Considering Sony's history for this kind of thing, it would not surprise me at all.

I could be wrong, but wasn't something like this to be expected? It seems pretty understandable.

With no internal memory, there has to be some method of tying games on memory cards to accounts. If not, they could just be copied over and over. All the user systems are flawed in one way or another, usually multiple ways, and this seems like a flaw that Sony is having to work around for Vita. It seems like the alternative would be that people could copy multiple games to a card, then sell that card, and all people would have to do is change the user account.

Or am I understanding the situation incorrectly? I know very little about handhelds.

@samwitsend
For what I can tell, no restrictions on content. Payments, however, are regionally restricted, so you ether need a CC or a prepay card from the region to fund the account.

in this picture: Sony making a ligitimate business off the vita it's going too sell like hotcakes because of ALL DOSE GAEMS

Woops wrong picture

IGNORE ME!

You know what really grinds my gears? YOU, America.

You know what really grinds my gears?

Those little tabbed lids for my coffee in the morning. They don't stay on particularly well and if you don't want to spill drinks all over yourself, just don't drink while driving. Also, they cut my old fogey lips from time to time.

Sincerely, somebody doing a very poor, text-only impersonation of Andy Rooney while simultaneously referencing South Park.

Wait, what does this mean if I want to plug my memory card into a different PSVita?

@pokota

If I understand you correctly, you mean kinda like the way a PS3 game downloaded on one account can be played by all accounts on the same PS3, and how you can redownload games you purchased on any PS3 as long as you had a spare console validation?

If that's the case, I think making a partition of some kind on the card that allows for data under one user to be inaccessible to any of the others would be a good idea. If it only allowed authentification for one account at a time, if the games are tied to the account on the card itself, then you shouldn't be able to copy the games, as you would inherently have to copy the account itself. If the games are tied to the account tied to the card, then only the games tied to that specific card would be able to be played on that card, effectively splitting your library between cards the way having physical copies of games splits your library. Copying your account wouldnt give you carte blanche to everything you've downloaded as the card itself is what everything is tied to, not the account. At least that's how I figure it given what I know, and I could definitely stand to know more.

If that's not what you meant at all then iono.

@Evergreen

In my understanding, you will then be playing on that other Vita on your own PSN account. The account follows the memory card, not the Vita.

Wow, and Jim (as well as alot of others in here) sinks even lower. First he complains that you cant have multiple accounts, which the majority of the other consoles dont allow, but when there is another option to do so, he complains even more.

Talk about biased, talk about awful journalism.

So many of you are such a delightful laugh.

Is that from Animaniacs on the article image? I miss that show.

On topic: My main issue with the Vita is that all games are not saved to the NVG cards. I thought Sony was doing a Nintendo-like approach on creating all game saves on game cards. Then people wouldn't have to be forced to pay memory cards to save games, just used for multimedia use. 16 GB and 32 GB Memory cards are stupidly priced. But this account limitation is not a big deal IMO since I don't share my portables with others. Portables are much more personal than consoles are.

Good thing I don't need multiple accounts. But who cares? At least it's possible.

Well that is a BIG RELIEF since now my wife and I can share the system. No big deal. We'd probably want our own card anyway.

sounds fair.

In more important news, is this the first Montana Max header on the site? Seems surprising, yet I don't recall it happening before.