The PlayStation Vita, a sexy bit of handheld kit indeed, sees release in Japan this year – with a release everywhere else in February next year. It has, for those of you with extensive PSP libraries, backwards compatibility. Sort of.
According to Andriasang, Sony’s confirmed the existence of a Passport Program for Japan that’ll allow Vita buyers to play their old PSP games on their shiny new handhelds. Here’s how it works :
- 1. Download a UMD Registration Application from PlayStation Store to your PSP
- 2. Boot up the UMD Registration Application from your PSP’s XMB menu and insert the UMD game you want to register into the system.
- 3. Follow the prompts to register your UMD disc with your PSN account
- 4. You can then download the downloadable version of your game at discount price.
Woah there…hold on a second. For a discount price? So you pretty much have to buy digital versions of your games again? Well that sucks – but at least they’re doing something, although I have to question why they couldn’t have thought of something like this for the digital-distribution-only PSP Go. Maybe then it wouldn’t have failed quite as spectacularly as it did. What, if I may be so bold as to ask, prevents people from just sharing their UMD collections to get cheaper downloads? Hmmm.
Not all PSP games will be supported, but 200 games from 40 companies – including the likes of third-party giants like Square Enix, Falcom, Capcom, Konami and Sega – will be available at launch.
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Last Updated: November 11, 2011
