Thanks to integrated hard drives, proprietary memory cards have mostly gone by the wayside -- yet they continue to cost an arm and a leg.  If you're like me you still play your last-gen consoles quite often, so new memory cards are still a must. Why are we still paying half the price of a game for these things?

Hit the link for my read-and-write rant.

Most first-pary memory cards (the only kind I trust) from the 128-bit era held around 8 megabytes of data.  Sure, that was quite beefy in 2000, but today, or even in 2004 for that matter, that's nothing.  These days, 4 or 8 gig SD cards are the norm.  Open up the Sunday circulars and you'll see 4 or 8 gig cards on sale for $15-$20 at Best Buy or the other electronic stores.

So why do the 8 meg cards cost $25 dollars when I can fit 8 gigs in my nostril in the form of a micro SD?  Yeah, PS2 and Gamecube memory cards use more plastic than SD cards, but there's no way it costs more than $3 to make an 8 meg chip.  [Here's a very cool, though rare, first-party solution I found for the Gamecube.]

Oh yeah, and the Xbox 360's 512MB memory cards are listed at $39.99.  I was thinking, "Well, 512MB is a little more reasonable for $25."  Then I checked the price.  This is just as bad.

Wii owners playing GC games need 'em too

These things need a price drop.  While we North Americans are the least taken advantage of when it comes to price gouging videogames, memory cards are still being used as a cash cow.  I'm not saying these things should be given away for next to nothing; I just think that the pricing should be fair.

Comments (2)

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (registered users only)

Add Comment