Top Tips To Futureproof Your PS Vita

Memory Cards

One of the biggest concerns with the PS Vita is that of memory cards. There are several things facing Vita owners here which I’ll address in turn and what you need to do to future your PS Vita as much as possible. The harsh reality is that official memory cards are expensive. Of greater concern is that they are becoming harder and harder to find. As a result prices have been on the increase for brand new cards leaving many Vita owners facing the prospect of buying cards second hand.

With Sony pushing the Vita to a digital based platform for several years, storage has always been at a premium so that has made being a Vita owner even more expensive. But that comes with added risks. While they are the most cost effective overall, 64Gb memory cards have been known to have higher failure rates than any of the other size options. As with all flash memory formats, these won’t last forever and will need replacing but being a proprietary system supplies are finite.

In terms of prices we’d generally advise you to shop around as things do vary from store to store and even on a daily basis. Pricing also seems to fluctuate wildly on the second hand market right now. Ultimately we’d suggest that you attempt to buy as many cards as you can afford to…

More Memory

Or there is the alternative option… For those of you with a PS Vita that has been modded using HENkaku you can use the much cheaper microSD cards instead. Not only will these be more cost effective, but offer larger capacities as well. Being an industry standard format, there’s no risk of a shortage of cards should you need to replace them. All you need is a modded Vita and the SD2Vita adaptor that fits snugly into the game card slot.

Content Manager and Backups

I know we’ve talked about the importance of using Content Manager to backup your games a lot here at Vita Player. But now this is more important than ever. If memory cards fail at any time you will need some way to recover copies of any games that you may have already purchased. And sadly Sony won’t be there to help out if you lose everything you own. They’ll simply advise that you should have made backups and wash their hands of any problems you may have. Regardless of the size of your digital collection, it is essential to make backups as often as you can or at least attempt to have a full backup of your digital collection. Even if Sony do remove any of the titles you have purchased in the future, at least your games will be safe in your own backed up storage.

PlayStation Plus

Now this is a controversial subject for Vita owners. Many of you may still have PlayStation Plus despite the service dropping the PS Vita back in March 2019. While many of you reading this with PlayStation Plus also have a PlayStation 4 and make use of the service because of that, there are some of you who are only subscribers so you can retain access to your PS Vita PS+ titles. The problem with PlayStation Plus and the Vita is two-fold. If we cancel our membership not only do we lose access to games we have downloaded (seven years worth and hundreds of games for many) but also the cloud game save function.

The cloud save is important for those who replace digital games with physical copies as it allows easy transfer of save games when we upgrade. Without the cloud storage Vita owners have no way to transfer save data between digital to physical titles. Also, there are games that were made available as part of PlayStation Plus that have since been removed from the PlayStation Store. The harsh reality is that we can not even buy these games if we wanted to if we allowed our membership to lapse. It places PS Vita owners at Sony’s mercy and certainly left paying for a service indefinitely.

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About Simon Plumbe 1052 Articles
Husband, father and lifelong geek. Originally from the West Midlands, now spending my days in South Wales with my family and a house full of animals. Passionate about video games, especially retro gaming, the Commodore 64 and PlayStation Vita. Love pro wrestling, sci-fi and I'm an animal lover and vegetarian. Enjoyed this and my other articles? Why not buy me a coffee: http://ko-fi.com/simonplumbe