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Sony PS2 memory cards: Why are they STILL 8MB? And a question about third-party cards

D

Diablos

Member
You can get a 128MB memory card for the price of Sony's 8MB memory cards (actually cheaper). Considering how much space you can get on such small memory cards, it should be a piece of cake for Sony to make PS2 memory cards that are 16 all the way up to 1GB, considering how clunky they are. Realistically speaking, 32-64MB would probably be more than fine considering the average amount of space required for most PS2 game saves.

Is it because the string "8MB(for PlayStation2)" is attached to the end of like EVERY save screen for PS2 games? Or is "8MB(for PlayStation2)" coming from the memory card itself when it is read? If anyone here uses a third party card, does it say the same thing?

Also, I've seen some 32MB cards on eBay. They actually have the Sony logo on them; they look authentic. They look exactly like the 8MB cards.

ou0d4l.jpg


http://cgi.ebay.com/NewGame-Memory-...ryZ21189QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

Are they? I doubt it, otherwise you'd see them in stores.
 
C

Cold-Steel

Member
The biggest problem with Sony's default 8MB is that most of the online games on PS2 (namely first-party titles like SOCOM 3 and Killzone) have online updates that take up a full 3MB of space on your card!

I barely have enough space now for 10 titles, and I don't play Killzone online because of it!

Good thing I have the HD. Not so useless after all!
 
Red Scarlet

Red Scarlet

Member
They didn't come out with a bigger Memory Card for the PS1 either, afaik. Probably won't for the PS2. Probably won't for the PS3.
 
S

Suikoguy

I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
Red Scarlet said:
They didn't come out with a bigger Memory Card for the PS1 either, afaik. Probably won't for the PS2. Probably won't for the PS3.
Click to expand...


Not really an issue for PS3 :D
 
D

Diablos

Member
Suikoguy said:
Not really an issue for PS3 :D
Click to expand...
Yeah, isn't PS3 using memory stick duo, as well as SD?
I'll just pick up something like this. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820214207
A little over $20 for 512MB. Sony is charging just as much if not more for 8MB. :lol

Unfortunately you can't do that with PS2.
It would be nice if they had an adapter that allowed you to put a SD card into it, then connect it to a memory card that had 8MB of memory. You could use your PC to swap data to and from the card's main memory to the external SD memory.

I think Datel makes something like it, but it's a rip. $35 for like 32MB of memory. Ridiculous.
 
J

Jewbacca

Banned
Diablos said:
Yeah, isn't PS3 using memory stick duo, as well as SD?
I'll just pick up something like this. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820214207
A little over $20 for 512MB. Sony is charging just as much if not more for 8MB. :lol

Unfortunately you can't do that with PS2.
It would be nice if they had an adapter that allowed you to put a SD card into it, then connect it to a memory card that had 8MB of memory. You could use your PC to swap data to and from the card's main memory to the external SD memory.

I think Datel makes something like it, but it's a rip. $35 for like 32MB of memory. Ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Actually its only 29.99 for 64MB memory card for the PS2. The offical PS2 Memory card was 24.99 for a 8mb card.... Rip? No :)
 
J

Jewbacca

Banned
Diablos said:
http://www.dealtime.com/xPC-MEMORY_32_MG_PS2_DATEL

::shrug:: That's what I was going off of.

Still, generally speaking, that's a lot of money for 32-64MB. I just linked to a SD card that holds 512MB, is much smaller than an official or third party Sony card, and costs LESS.
Click to expand...

True... SD cards are also are produced at a quantity and rate far greater than the PS2 Memory... 1000x more? = a lot cheaper. A rip off yes? Gets the job done though. VMU's werent a rip off right, and dont get me started on GameCube memory cards =P
 
Agent X

Agent X

Member
I don't know what's worse--the fact that Sony's 8 MB memory cards still sell for $25 each, or that they never bothered to release anofficial memory card with a larger capacity?

You can get a Nyko 8 MB card (officially licensed) for $20, or get a 2-pack of Sony 8 MB cards for $40. That's slightly better, but it's still nowhere near where it should be from a consumer perspective.

I think part of this is the "captive audience" mentality. PS2 memory cards can only be used on PS2 and nowhere else; likewise, you can't save PS2 games on anything other than a memory card made specifically for PS2. So, there was never really much incentive for them to drop the price, other than when they dropped from the initial $30 or $35 (whatever they were in 2000) to the current $25 level about a year later. I would've liked to see them at $20 or under ($15 or under for third-party licensed cards) by this time, but no such luck. PS2 memory cards probably won't drop in price until the PS3 is released or the PS2 drops below $100, whichever comes first.

The PSP has luckily avoided this problem because Sony went with Memory Stick Duo, which is produced by multiple manufacturers and used on a wider variety of products. Also, the products that use Memory Sticks (cameras, digital music players, PDAs, etc.) have to compete on a larger scale with similar products that use other flash memory formats (SD, CompactFlash, etc.), so there was a level of competition that didn't really exist with the PS2 and other game consoles.

The PS3 should also avoid this problem, since it will have slots for Memory Stick, SD, and CompactFlash. Even if only one of those formats (likely Memory Stick) is used for saving games and the other two are read-only, it should still be a much better situation than we had for PS2 and PS1.
 
E

EphemeralDream

Member
I actually went to buy a second PS2 mem card the other day and opted for the $5 more official over Naki even though the Gamestop guy warned me that it was official also. Well the elitist in me won out even though I feel kind of stupid now due to this thread.

A lot of third-party accessories aren't as good as the officials though. What about with memory cards?
 
D

Diablos

Member
As long as its the same amount of memory I don't think you need to worry. Its when there's a higher capacity or they use compression when you have to start worrying.

Datel cards are probably reliable too, because memory that GAMES reads is only 8MB, then the rest of the memory is used to store files you aren't currently using.

But yeah, I was in the memory card menus for a few minutes copying/deleting stuff and I was finally able to get a decent amount of free space. One card has around 150KB free, the other one 4MB. I guess 4MB should suffice for now.
 
A

aceface

Member
I've had one PS2 memory card since I got my first PS2 the January after launch, and I've never run out of space. Is this unusual?
 
Red Scarlet

Red Scarlet

Member
Was it PS1 and/or PS2 cards that the 3rd party ones were troublesome and would delete? I know a couple of 3rd party PS1 ones have that problem but never bothered with them for PS2.
 
G

gamergirly

Member
aceface said:
I've had one PS2 memory card since I got my first PS2 the January after launch, and I've never run out of space. Is this unusual?
Click to expand...

Yeah if youre not playing alot of sports games
 
M

My Arms Your Hearse

Banned
Yes, you need to play more games, especially more RPGs~~

While I hate the fact that the card is still so small, I still only buy the standard Sony 8mb... I'm probalby being totally irrational but I've heard far too many horror stories about third party cards just shitting out. No way I'm going to lose the data on the last 5 RPGs I played due to a shitty card.
 
D

Diablos

Member
Red Scarlet said:
Was it PS1 and/or PS2 cards that the 3rd party ones were troublesome and would delete? I know a couple of 3rd party PS1 ones have that problem but never bothered with them for PS2.
Click to expand...
Third party PS1 cards were notorious for having a lot of problems. An official PS1 memory card has one, count it, one MEGABIT of memory. 128 kilobytes. Therefore third party companies would sell cards that used compression. The compression is what caused the lost/corrupt data occurances because it simply wasn't reliable. I would guess it's because not all data compresses exactly the same, and this would cause problems if you were saving for more than one game on a memory card. Plus I'm sure some games themselves would compress data prior to saving it to the memory card (with a method proven to be reliable through testing), especially as time went on and games needed to save more. But when you use a generic compression scheme for a wide variety of game saves with such limited space... you're asking for trouble.

I believe the *only* way you could get more space out of a PS1 memory card is if you compressed that 128k. I don't think the PS1 was designed to address more than 128 kilobytes per memory card. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong on that though, but I'm pretty sure that was the case.

As far as PS2 memory cards go... eBay seems to sell cards that look just like official ones but really have 32MB. I don't know if this is 32MB of actual memory or 8MB compressed. I honestly don't know if the PS2 was designed to address more than 8MB per memory card. I can almost remember reading that PS2 memory cards might have come out in capacities of 16MB.

Datel got smart and released a memory card that has 8MB of main memory (that the console addresses), and then 32MB of, shall we call it, external memory on the card that you can store saves you don't need at the moment on. But the 32MB isn't used directly with games so you don't have to worry about corruption, plus it's not compressed memory.

I'm sure a third-party 8MB, non compressed memory card for PS2 works fine. PS1 memory cards, for example, were only a nightmare if they used compressed memory. Unofficial cards that did not compress data didn't give anyone trouble.
 
J

Jonnyram

Member
Agent X said:
I don't know what's worse--the fact that Sony's 8 MB memory cards still sell for $25 each, or that they never bothered to release anofficial memory card with a larger capacity?
Click to expand...
The former. Definitely.
 
D

drohne

hyperbolically metafictive
ps2 memory cards are irritatingly small. i've tried to keep myself to two, but that doesn't work even if i delete stuff i'll never use. i should look into some pc connectivity solution instead of buying another 8mb card like an idiot.

thank fuck that next-gen consoles have opted out of the proprietary memory scam. well, unless you've got a tard pack.
 
D

Diablos

Member
Well, I could link to more SD memory for extremely cheap prices, but let's get real here. A 256, 512 or 1GB Sony PS2 memory card would be a bit ridiculous.

Assuming most of us need 2-4 memory cards, capacities of 16, 24, and 32MB would have been great. Plus, it's not a ton of space so it should't cost much to make.

And hey, 8MB per card at $29.99 is great for Sony. Can't argue that. But it's a complete rip for the consumer.
 
A

Andokuky

Banned
I've had 2 8MB cards since I got my PS2 and I've never had a problem with it. Only 1 game has really been a pain space wise and that was SOCOM 2 which required 3MB. Other than that the required space for most games are really low. Sports games can ge a problem too if you have a lot of different roster saves and franchise modes. But I think it's fine though they could be a little cheaper.
 
K

kaching

"GAF's biggest wanker"
What I don't understand is why Sony didn't take the opportunity with the PStwo to incorporate a memory stick slot in addition to standard memory cards to at least function in a similar fashion as the HDD did in the original PS2 (i.e. backup storage for game saves, game specific downloads, etc.)
 
D

DarienA

The black man everyone at Activision can agree on
Red Scarlet said:
Oh, last I heard they were using some memory card type things that were bigger, but still memory card type things.
Click to expand...

Yes but there are already lots of different size Mem Stick Duo and Pro Duo cards so this problem doesn't exist in that format.
 
K

kaching

"GAF's biggest wanker"
So say the specs and the physical PS3 mockup that has been making the rounds at tradeshows such as E3 and CES, Diablos. MS, SD and CF are supported, though which ones will actually be supported for game saves is up for debate. There's actually no reference to PS/PS2 style memory card slots in the current specs or case design for the PS3.
 
D

Deg

Banned
MoxManiac said:
Think of the profit they rake in with those. 8MB for $20-$25 apiece. What a fucking margin :lol
Click to expand...
Weaksauce.
Thats nothing compared to Nintendo's margins.
 
D

Diablos

Member
kaching said:
So say the specs and the physical PS3 mockup that has been making the rounds at tradeshows such as E3 and CES, Diablos. MS, SD and CF are supported, though which ones will actually be supported for game saves is up for debate. There's actually no reference to PS/PS2 style memory card slots in the current specs or case design for the PS3.
Click to expand...
Cool.

No PS1/2 card slot? That's strange... considering that it will be backwards compatible, or is expected to be.
 
H

HomerSimpson-Man

Member
Diablos said:
Cool.

No PS1/2 card slot? That's strange... considering that it will be backwards compatible, or is expected to be.
Click to expand...

That might mean we can save with the Pro Duos and such, but could also mean that trying to start from a old file on the PS2 cards isn't an option anymore.
 
V

VNZ

Member
There was some kind of talk/announcement of an official 64MB card when the Gran Turismo 4 box/wheel/etc was shown. Never saw it again.
 
S

ShowDog

Member
I HATE the ps2 memory cards. I have three of them, and I can never remember what data is on what card. I have 50 games, so it gets hard to remember. The worst is when you pop in a game and it autocreates new data on the wrong card. Then you have 2 or maybe even 3 memory cards with the save data on them and no foolproof way to discover which memory card has the data with the 50 hours of work put into it and which has 5 mintues of gametime on it. That is unless you want to go boot up the game and check, but who has time to boot up all those games and restart them all just to check memory card data. It really is a shitty situation. Especially with some games taking up so much space.
 
L

Link316

Banned
Diablos said:
And hey, 8MB per card at $29.99 is great for Sony. Can't argue that. But it's a complete rip for the consumer.
Click to expand...

Sony's made a 2 pack available for years now and its only $30 to $35, if some people are too lazy to shop around then its really their own fault for letting a store rip them off
 
R

Ristamar

Member
This may be a stupid question, but are PS2 saves files generally a bit bloated compared to GC save files? It seems like a fit a hell of a lot more shit on my 8MB GC card. I've got a save for practically every GC game I own, including an NBA Live Franchise file. I don't have half as many PS2 games, but my damn card seems to full already.
 
Q

qirex

Member
While third party PS2 cards aren't nearly as bad as Playstation ones are I'd still encourage people to buy first-party ones. We've had a couple threads on SA about off-brand cards crapping out.
 
D

Diablos

Member
qirex, thanks for the heads up.

MoxManiac said:
I think the goddamn fancy animated savefile icons are partly to blame for this.
Click to expand...
Yeah; are those really needed? Just put in a small image file of the game's logo :p
 
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