When the PSPGo was revealed back in May, the biggest question on consumers minds was what would become of current UMD titles. PSP owners who want the upgrade were afraid of losing access to their current PSP library. Sony spoke of a possible trade program, which would have allowed those with current UMD games, to trade in their disc for a download voucher of the same game.
Well, you can forget it. A spokesperson for SCEA announced at TGS that “due to legal and technical reasons we will not be offering the program at this time.” Sony is still however “We were evaluating a UMD conversion program,” but as of now have no plans on making this a reality. To add insult to injury, SCEA announced that it will not have the PSP Go Rewards program that’s in Europe, which gives anyone who registers their PSP Go three free game downloads. This is certainly a low blow to anyone looking to update from a disc based PSP to the sleek new Go. It will be interesting to see how much of an effect this has on US sales. Either program would have been acceptable, and yet anyone looking to upgrade to a Go with current UMD games is basically out of luck.
All that’s left now is to wait and see the prices of older PSP games on PSN. Maybe some people will suck it up and rebuy their games for a cheap price, though I don’t see that happening much. I personally have adopted a “one PSP” rule, so it looks like I, like many other people, will continue to use a UMD based Sony handheld for a little while longer.
