When Sony revealed the PSP Go this week, it confirmed rumors that the handheld console won't use the unpopular UMD format. In fact, it looks like Sony really wants you to trade-up to a Go: It'll convert your old UMD games for you, possibly for free.
This news came when Gizmodo's Mark Wilson cornered a Sony executive at E3 this week. Wilson wanted to know how Sony was going to deal with its "loyal fanbase" who bought earlier versions of the PSP and had a stack of UMD-version games, but want to get a PSP Go. Sony's Director of Hardware Marketing John Koller gave the somewhat surprising answer that Sony was quickly putting together a "good will program", based on the company's Portable Copy solution that lets users downconvert Blu-ray movies for PSP compatibility, that would let gamers swap old UMD games for new digital-only versions.
It's a fabulous move, and in our cynical modern world it seems a pretty generous move by Sony--which, after all, is a company that expects you to buy the same movie on Blu-ray disc now that you already own the DVD. The logic is pretty sound though: The PSP Go's hardware is significantly neater than the predecessor PSPs but more expensive, and if letting people trade-in their old UMD games for digital only versions tempts people to buy Gos, then Sony makes a profit.
But Wilson draws a further conclusion from the news, arguing that since Portable Copy is a free facility, it may be possible that Sony will allow the UMD conversion for free as well.
Would Sony do this though? Actually, it's pretty possible. After all, the only difference between the digital-only and UMD versions of the older games is their medium--and gamers would be very discouraged to buy Gos if they had to pay for their favorite titles twice. As we've seen this week, Sony's possibly turning away from its nasty proprietary format past.
[via Gizmodo]
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Related Stories: | Topics:Innovation, Technology, Design, UMD, universal media disc, sony, proprietary format, psp, PSP Go, Mark Wilson, John Koller, Portable Copy, gaming, Sony Corporation, Sony PSP, Culture and Lifestyle, Games, Hobbies and Pastimes |
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Recent Comments | 4 Total
June 5, 2009 at 2:56pm by Brandon McCall
I think this would be a very logical for Sony. They need all the good PR they can get.
June 8, 2009 at 5:29am by Kit Eaton
@Brandon. It's certainly a very positive step, especially given that it looks like all the old PSP peripherals won't fit the Go.
August 26, 2009 at 5:00pm by Sophie Densbrook
This is good news, I don't want to have to buy all my favorite titles again.
Buy PSP Go | Buy PSP Go
November 16, 2009 at 11:21am by Andrew Tickson
I think that is was a nice strategy from Sony. The only reason why people wouldn't buy PSP go is their UMD's. But now when Sony offers to convert them (I hope they will make their promises), of course everyone will purchase the new product. I will purchase it too for sure. So thanks for the nice offer from Sony and I will trey to contact them about this question. (Because I have about 200 unconverted UMD's). Thanks to the author for this useful article, it was very nice to read news like this here. I will be waiting for other great posts from you in the future too. Thanks!
Sincerely,
Andrew Tickson from convert tiff to jpeg