So I made a thread recently about some PlayStation Vita pricing theories.  This led to some interesting discussions and theories as to the true cost to manufacture the Vita, how to weigh R & D costs, and what kind of profit margins existed on the Vita and its memory cards, which most people agree are overpriced.  In writing this and responding to those who had chose to partake in the discussion, I completely forgot something I saw in a Best Buy about a month ago.  Vita memory cards were on clearance for half price!  I only took the picture of the sold out 16 GB as I knew a friend was looking for one and took the picture to send the info to them in an SMS message, but I'm not sure if the others were on sale.

I'm not sure if this was just something local to my Best Buy or if it was more widespread, but it is very interesting.  I'm really not sure what to make of this, but I figured I'd share to see what theories existed out there and to see if anyone else had seen anything similar.

This thread over at Cheap Ass Gamer seems to confirm the same, and only for the 16 GB as I saw.

Thoughts?

Absolutely nothing! Vita was never hurt by card prices. It is a sour theory postulated by those who didn't understand the system. Vita needs games and a price drop. Not a cheaper memory card.

Also, at 29.99, this means that also BestBuy was taking in huge margins on those cards, not just sony.

This happened a while ago at the Best Buy I work at. Also remember stores get a large profit margin on all accessories so while a 32gb is $100 for consumers, the retail stores buy them from sony for much less.

I wasn't saying it needed cheaper memory cards, I just thought it odd for them to randomly go half off at two major retailers.  I have a Vita and feel it's doing well--not bad, not great--on games.  The $50 between $200 and $250 didn't matter to me, but I could see how it's prohibitive for the larger gaming demographic.

More just looking for opinions on why the temporary drop occurred.  The obvious theory would be to move stock to make room for something else, but it's not like these take up a lot of shelf space or are going anywhere.

Honestly, I don't think anything can save the vita. It has the games, it has a great price, the psp was very successful, yet it's not doing so well. It might be the perception of the vita, but at this point, I really just don't know.

I'm not sure it needs saving.  People said the same thing about the PS3 at this point in its lifecycle.

Not neccessarily.  Clearance prices are usually below cost.  

Big box retailers like best buy view the amount of space being taken up in a store as a cost.  So, if a product isnt selling well, they view it as costing them money by just sitting there because they could put something else there that could sell.  Retailers will then put the product on clearance at below cost to clear up the space so that they can put something else there and stop losing money.

When I worked at best buy, one of the most annoying things i had to do was look at these 'at risk' products and make sure we made an effort to sell them before they went on clearance.  Unfortunately, products that were at risk didnt sell for a reason, as they were mostly stupid or very overpriced...

Ya but the PS3 didn't have even close to the amount of quality software that the vita currently has, also the vita currently has a really great price while the ps3 was still way over priced.

Makes sense, but the memory card doesn't take up that much shelf space--I realize every inch is important--so I wonder what they planned to put there?

Interestingly, only the 8 GB and 32 GB memory cards appear on Best Buy's website...those would be my two predictions for which ones sell the best.  Maybe this theory has legs.  The 4 GB is worthless and anyone just looking for a memory card big enough to play will only want the 8 GB, not the 32 GB.  Any hardcore gamer (like me) is going to want to go straight for the 32 GB and skip over the 16 GB.

You can still find microSD or SD cards for about half that, so I don't see what the big deal is. Heck, even a 16 GB flash drive is less than that: it's still ridiculously overpriced. It might just be Best Buy selling it at cost: the Vita isn't selling well, and this might be an attempt to cannibalize the Vita's shelf-space.

The thing with the memory cards was that compared to the DS, the PSP could do so much with it's memory card. Play music, video, game from the card. Memory was really bloody useful. The same is true with the Vita: a large 32 GB card means the Vita can deliver entertainment on par with tablets twice it's size and expense.

But then there's the competition. If you want to tablet, get a Nook (or any base tablet which takes an SD card.) If you want to game, get a 3DS XL. In both of these cases, you can max these system's memory out for less than the Vita's base price.

BECAUSE the Vita is overpowered, the memory is overpriced.