The wheels, they are in motion. Sony today announced that they’re selling Sony branded SD, SDHC and MicroSD cards to accompany their lineup of SD card products launched earlier this year. But the real question is: When will they finally take Memory Stick out the back and shoot it in the head?
The very fact that Sony have SD cards now shows that the Memory Stick is dying. But the sad truth is that it will probably take a few more years before we can cast it into the pile of other lost formats, alongside minidisc and Betamax.
As it stands, probably the single biggest excuse for Sony to hold on to Memory Stick is the PSP. As it stands, most of their current range of cameras and camcorders support SD card, and by next year all of them will. But the PSP is a different beast. Even the PSPGo has an M2 Memory Stick port, and it’s not even 12 months old.
Even if Sony completely changed the PSP and the PSPGo this year at E3 (which is doubtful, really), at best it would take a couple of years for the current stock of products to completely give way to SD supporting models.
So in other words, don’t ditch your Memory Stick Duo cards just yet…