I really wanted to buy a Vita--gorgeous screen, no region lock, Sony's PlayStation division showing (what appears to be legitimate) humility and great love for indie devs--UNTIL Sony announced the Vita would use a proprietary card format. Maybe now that Sony has spun off their TV business to a wholly owned subsidiary and jettisoned their PC business, whoever was making the inane decision to shoehorn proprietary storage into every Sony device can politely be told to shut up and sit down and whatever handheld Sony develops next can use microSD cards instead of some absurdly priced single-purpose proprietary card. (One can hope, anyway.)
It's a real shame that Sony continues to cling to outmoded design with a death grip, likely forced on them by the same incompetent leadership that has only won one format in recent memory (Blu-ray) when they could have ruled the market. I mean, imagine spending years of your life to design a beautiful new car with fantastic gas mileage only to have the business leadership of your company demanding that you change the design so the car only uses proprietary tires that cost $2500 for a set of four.
And yes, I'm aware that piracy was (allegedly) a major issue for the PSP. But last I checked, the 3DS (which uses SD cards for storage) still hasn't been fully cracked 3 years after launch. The piracy-enabling options that are available are awkward, short on features, only work on very old firmware, and are probably more hassle than they're worth (and that's if they don't brick your 3DS outright).
I really wanted to like the Vita. But the proprietary card killed it for me.
That, and Nintendo's strong first-party lineup (Super Mario 3D Land + Pokemon X + Mario Kart 7 + Zelda: A Link Between Worlds), is what led me to choose the 3DS over the Vita.
But proprietary cards aside, I'm still rooting for the Vita (even though I refuse to buy one) because competition is good (and because I may have to eat my words if Sony ever lowers the price of the Vita cards to reasonable levels and Sega refuses to localize Puyo Puyo Tetris).
EDIT: But hey! I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer. The Vita is an excellent piece of hardware and I hope the Vita owners in our community enjoy it in good health.
EDIT#2: If Atlus had decided to include the Japanese voice audio in Persona 4 Golden, I may have been writing this from the perspective of a Vita owner instead of a critic of Sony business practices.
EDIT#3: You should totally import Puyo Puyo Tetris.
EDIT#4: Japesland has a Vita and <3s it. He should post in this thread.
