Am I the only one who'd prefer region locking over overpriced memory cards?
That 8gb memory card gave me WAY more trouble than region locking ever did.
No, because the pricing of memory cards is a more relevant problem to me and it would be an even bigger problem if there weren't region locking (which there isn't, on the Vita).
Having said that, I wouldn't prefer either of them. If I had to choose between them I'd have to take a look at what's at risk on the system in question, but I don't think either of those things is something the consumer would want. Any consumer.
EDIT: ...Though, all things considered, I think region locking is a larger issue on both a universal and a personal front. Despite memory cards being overpriced, they simply limit what you can have on your device at one time. To prevent that, you'd just have to bite the bullet and buy a larger memory card. I don't mean to undermine this, it IS a big issue and an incredibly annoyance to me as a Vita user. I think the bigger issue, though, is that we are restricted to Sony's rather inconvenient storage medium. If we were able to use something else, this would be no problem at all, but these memory cards are both overpriced and inconvenient for transferring data. I'm not saying a revision is required, but if they were to switch to Micro SDs (which is unlikely), I would be much happier with my Vita.
However, with Region Locking, you are completely unable to enjoy games from other regions. There's no sacrifice that can be made to make it happen and it's much more than an inconvenience; you're practically shut out from the gaming world in terms of choices. To actually play those games, you not only need to buy the system for the game of that region, but you also have to deal with all the inconvenience that comes with it.
For instance, and I want to use an English language game as an example, I really want Inazuma Eleven 3. I'm a big fan of Inazuma Elevens 1 and 2, and I've really been interested in three, which was previously Japan-only. Now, it's finally getting released in English!...In Europe. On the DS, this would hardly be inconvenient. 1 and 2 were EU/JP only, so all I had to do was import and pop 'em into my DS. Heck, playing from a flashcart or emulator was even an option if I didn't want to or couldn't import them. With the 3DS...it's not so simple. Since it's region locked, I can't get it without buying an EU 3DS. What's more, there is no way to play via emulator and the current "flashcart" (so to speak) can't play games from other regions. So, essentially, I'm in a predicament where I want this one English game but I am unable to play it at all from my 3DS.
This isn't a small thing, either. There have been PLENTY of games that were NA/JP only and were not available to the EU. One of the most famous examples is Chrono Trigger, which was that way for 10+ years before it was released internationally on the DS. Many people natively spoke the languages, and many other games didn't require the language to be spoken to understand them, but they were still denied from the average consumer of various regions. I'm not just talking importers or people who have interests in games from various regions, but I'm talking about the average joe that simply really wants a game from another region, and I think that's a pretty big deal.