Sony’s latest hand held gaming system, the Sony PSVita, is already in the eyes of hackers wanting to crack its code to pirate video games. Sony's first PSP has been plagued by piracy, Which has pushed away both developers and publishers alike. Sony wants to prevent history from repeating and is taking actions to change history with the new PS Vita. But can Sony stop its piracy problem? Check out what Sony has up their sleeves to try and prevent hackers from getting their way.

Sony’s plan to fight gaming piracy

Expecting the new PlayStation Vita to last more than half a decade, Sony says it as taken some key steps to preserve the platform's long term security from day one. Sony's head of worldwide game development, Shuhei Yoshida, has mentioned before "We are designing this PS Vita to last five, six, seven, eight years,"

If Sony expects to keep the PS Vita kicking for that amount of time, they will have to figure out a way to stop hackers from pirating games. This way developers will be incited to stick around and produce exciting games that users will want to purchase, seven years from now.

Sony's VP of worldwide studios, Scott Rohde explains that Sony had anti-piracy in mind all along when producing the PS Vita.

"That was front and center in the early specs of this machine," "We needed to have something that would combat piracy from day one, and that's why the cards that you can purchase for the games are in their own proprietary format."

How does Sony’s new PSVita card work?

The PS Vita will support two different types of storage options. The larger card in the picture to your right, is simply a Vita game cartridge with games already saved directly to them. You can compare them to Sony UMD’s for the PSP or how Nintendo uses Game Cards for the DS/3DS. You will be able to purchase these games at any retail store selling Vita games. These Physical games do not require internal memory from the PlayStation Vita to play, as 5–10% of the game cards space is writable which is reserved for game save data and firmware patches.

The anti-piracy memory cards that Scott is speaking of are the PlayStation Memory cards (The smaller card on right), Which Sony has specially designed to use with the PS Vita. Even though the PS Vita flash cards look almost identical to a Micro SD Card, non-Playstation branded memory cards will not be compatible with the Vita.

These PS cards will be used to download and hold video game content from the PlayStation Store and also store saved gaming data from the Vita. You will be able to purchase the PS Vita cards from retail stores with memory capacities of 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB, pricing will range from $20 to $100. However, unlike the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS/3DS that have an SD slot, Sony’s new memory cards are nothing like an ordinary SD card.

Do I have to buy a PS Vita Card?

Without Sony’s PS Vita Card, Vita users will not have a way to download retail games from the PlayStation Store or store any other type of personal data for that matter, as Users have no access to Vita’s internal memory. Some Sony media applications and games will even require the proprietary PlayStation Vita memory card to be inserted in order to use the media.

The first time the user inserts a Sony flash card, it will bind and be attached to that individuals PlayStation Network account. This means Vita users cannot share memory cards with an other friends PlayStation Network account. Only one card per account. So if you’re sharing a PlayStation Vita and have two accounts, you must have your own flash memory.

Game updates and patches will also be saved directly onto the PlayStation Vita Card. This means you can use the same game card on any other PS Vita system and not have to download any game or firmware updates, its all in the card.



The only way to switch the account on the card is to reformat it, which will delete all the data. Also something interesting to note is if you remove the memory card from the Vita, it will cause the system to reboot. Also no other system currently supports Sony’s PS Vita cards, but your data can be backed up to a PC or PS3.

Will PSVita cards solve Sony’s piracy issues?

Sony is doing something totally different then its competition, in hopes to over come piracy. Making it a point to force every one with a PS Vita to buy their own individual PlayStation Vita Card. Unlike the PSP which featured a standard memory slot for any one to use, this also made it easy to pirate games.

While many gamers might not be to happy about the direction Sony decided to take in order to fight piracy, Rohde’s explains how "It's something that we felt was completely necessary to make sure that people could not pirate these games. I mean, it's a custom security solution on each one of these cartridges. That is something that we are confident will protect us from piracy for the long term."

With many pros and cons that can be made about the new Sony PlayStation Vita card, what is your take on it? How do you feel about Sony’s new approach to piracy? Do you think this will stop hackers, or just slow them down? How do you feel about being forced into purchasing a memory card to use the system? Are you going to purchase the new Vita? Leave your comments down below.

Check out BestBuy’s website to get more info and purchase the Sony PlayStation Vita and PSVita memory cards

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