PlayStation Vita Matters

Why does Sony make so many mistakes when it comes to the United States?  Their products (generally speaking) are of good quality, often they are some what over priced, but are usually worth the value.  I don’t understand why in the past oh five to ten years have started making so many mistakes when it comes to the U.S., and why they seem to think we are some sort of special exception to the rest or the world, that or are aliens… I’m not sure which one it is.


Take reports on the PlayStation Vita for example.  Kotaku’s report about the Vita not being able to use the UMD Passport program in the United States.  Assuming Kotaku has done their job (and based off of reports from G4, Joystiq, and Engadget they seem to be right on the money) this means that every other country in the world that is getting the Vita will have access to this feature of the game, and in fact it is available in Japan.    Does anyone else see an issue here?

Lets take a moment to explain what the Passport program does.  As G4 points out in the statement by SCEA there are “over 250 PSP titles” that are available for the Vita.  The passport program allows anyone with one of theses titles (assuming your not American) to put the disk in their PSP and while logged into their Sony account, they can sign in with their PSP (which are restricted to a single account) and purchase a copy of that game for the Vita at a reduced fee.  In essence you are buying the game a second time, but at a reduced cost as a way of saying thank you for buying the game in the first place.

Instead they are removing this feature from the PS Vita for Americans.  Unless there is some sort of discount pricing that is going to occur JUST FOR AMERICANS (which is highly unlikely) this means that we will have to pay full price for PSP games to play on a Vita if you are getting one.  Pardon me for saying this but its not only a huge error for Sony (after all the PSP hasn’t been as strong as the DS line for Nintendo), bit it feels a lot like discrimination based off of location.

Let me put this a different way.  If you were in a store, and someone made you fill out a card describing your racial background and then they looked at you and charged you twice as much for the same items as the customer before you because “your ancestry is from that one place” you would scream and in America would sue for racial discrimination.  Another example… if you went across country and had to show your driver’s license to pick up lets say a book you’ve been dying to read while on vacation.  If the store then charged you an extra 50% because you weren’t a state resident, you wouldn’t take it would you?  No you would go to a competitor, probably contact the police, and definitely would contact the BBB.

So what's different here?  Well first of all no one else can change this price or practice, Sony has a monopoly here.  You have to use their Passport to get the discount   Go to GameStop they might give you a few bucks for the disk, but that’s it… they can’t/won’t sell you a game for half the asking price.  So instead Sony decides to make a profit on America’s back.

Gee thanks…  based off of this, the 3G system requiring a plan with AT&T (yes Wi-Fi only models are available), and the requirement of specialty memory cards which only work with the Vita,  I would have to give this system a recommendation of DON’T BUY.  I honestly liked the PSP, and the other systems made by Sony.  This time however with a $250 starting price this system just misses the mark for me, just like the 3DS did when it was the same price.