PSP Store to come with full game downloads

Posted by Al Warmington on Fri 10 Oct 2008

Is Sony finally killing off its defunct format?

Sony has announced that full downloads of first-party PSP games will be available to Japanese gamers when the long-awaited PSP PlayStation Store launches next week.

Although full games have been available to download from the PC and PS3 PlayStation Stores, the arrival of the PSP's own virtual shop will bring with it the chance to buy first-party titles at the same time as they launch on UMD.

The proprietary UMD format has been criticised for the fact that there is no option to write your own blank UMDs, nor are there any other devices that support the discs. It's a completely closed system, which has proved a major blow for Sony's UMD movie business. Hell, even spinning the discs inside the PSP eats up valuable battery power, so digital copies of games have the added appeal of letting you play for longer. In short, someone needs to take UMD to the old formats home before it forgets its own name and starts weeing everywhere.

It's going to be a while before that happens. Japan is getting its new PSP Store on October 15th. Europe and America will have to wait a little longer. But even when it does reach these shores, SCEE says that full, simultaneous games downloads is not on the cards.

Once Nintendo has its own DS Store in full swing though, we'll see if it decides to change its tune.

(via Spong)