Are you steamed that you can't transfer your UMDs to your PlayStation Vita? Unhappy at the expectation to purchase games you've already bought if you want them on your shiny new handheld? Well, according to Sony, you're an insignificant minority.
"The system has been introduced in Japan, where there is a much larger demand for PSP games," explained Shuhei Yoshida to Wired. "When you look at the release schedule of new titles there are still lots of PSP games being released in Japan and being announced for release. Lots of people who are interested in trying Vita are also interested in playing PSP games that they might purchase before Vita comes out, and will not necessarily choose the digital version. So there is a lot more demand… to introduce a program like that.
"The other point is that when you look at PSP titles sold digitally in the States or Europe, games are sold for a really reasonable price. You can buy Final Fantasy Tactics for $10. That's a great price ... PSP games in Japan are sold at a much higher price, so people see the value in spending the $5 to $10 to get the digital copy. But when the games are already sold at a lower price in the U.S. we see less value in introducing that kind of system."
He fails to mention that a number of PSP titles are still being sold for $39.99 on PSN, making them just as expensive as retail PS Vita titles. If I've already paid for Persona 3 Portable, expecting another forty bucks seems a little excessive.
Q&A: Sony’s Game Design Chief Talks PlayStation Vita [Wired]
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
Likes
PS2, iPod Touch, Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid, Dynasty Warriors 3
Meet the rest of the team
| BBcode help |
| [b]Bold text[/b] |
Bold text |
| [i]Italic text[/i] |
Italic text |
| [url]http://www.dtoid.com/[/url] |
http://www.dtoid.com |
| [url=http://www.dtoid.com/]Web link[/url] |
Web link |
|
| [img]http://www.example.com/robot.jpg[/img] |
 |
Post a comment! You can also post a photo below:
Comment with Facebook
Click connect and comment instantly!
|
Comment with Dtoid
New? SIGN UP - it takes 5 seconds
|
81 comments | showing # 1 to 50
|
Comment with Facebook
Click connect and comment instantly!
|
Comment with Dtoid
New? SIGN UP - it takes 5 seconds
|
Comments policy
Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just speak your mind. We respect differing opinions on the site, so have at it. Be smart, funny, insightful, clueless, or cute -- but back it up with substance. Keep your cool, keep it fun. We only ask that you act respectfully and above all: don't be a troll and ruin it for everyone else. Don't bring down gamers or we'll, you know, gently shoot you in the face and stuff you into a flaming mailbox. Each comment is your opportuntity to make this community awesomer. Is that even a word?
Avoiding the banhammer only requires common sense: spamming, trolling, racism, NSFW stuff, and other forms of sucking will not be tolerated. If anyone is griefing please report abuse. Be good. Don't suck!
Contest:
9:40 AM on 02.22.2012 | 
Me: I tried!
Nintendo's getting more progresive and forward-thinking.
Sony's thinking is now becoming more dated and out-of-touch.
Nintendo might be taking baby steps here, sure, but it still looks like a grand stride forward with all the backpedaling Sony does right now.
They're usually spot on.
we were lucky to even have backwards compatibility in previous generations. stop expecting it all the time. just use your old system those games were made for.
Nintendo, foward moving? You mean the company who biggest title last year was a remake of a Zelda game we all have beaten 900 times over at this point. The same company that said being able to play current Gen games on their new console with slight enhancements ( if any) is a plus?
Sony hasn't been out of touch with anyone, we called for the death of umds,its just now that the average idiot just figured out that would negatively impact backwards compatibility. Most people with functioning brains figured that out from the beginning and declare that an acceptable sacrifice.
Because umds did suck.
Sony isn't a charity.
Still i may be in a good place to say that as i've had a PSPgo for the last year, so all my recent purchases have been digital and have transfered to my Vita with only one minor hitch (the Gran Turismo save data).
The only UMD game i've "lost" is Peace Walker, and i was kinda done with Peace Walker already. plus it's in the MGS pack? right?
Yes, Nintendo. The company that has been ahead of the curve for more than half a decade. The company that was so ahead of the curve that Sony and Microsoft were tripping over their hard nipples trying to recreate their success for themselves. Forward thinking is a more than appropriate way to describe Nintendo, for better or for worse.
Sony hasn't made a profit in half a decade, they are known as a prime example of a company losing touch with their consumers. They're almost humorously out of touch, which is why they make more money on selling insurance than everything else they sell combined.
Also, most people with a functioning brain could read that there is indeed a solution to the backwards compatibility issue, and that Sony is simply telling people they just don't want it bad enough. If sacrificing for something when there is a real solution to the problem is "acceptable" to you, that's your business, but don't act as though your acceptance somehow makes you smarter or more savvy.
Just how many of you still use DVDs? Do you by chance own a BD player, but still rent DVDs and not upgrade from the DVDs you have to BD versions.
I never see anyone say "DVD players are for DVDs" these days and that's because BD players are also for DVDs. One newer technology assimilated the ability to read DVDs. Not only that - HOLY SHIT - it plays CDs, too?
what an amazing future we live in!
So what's with this "PSP games are for PSP" crap. My iPhone 4 plays all prior iPhone games. My 3Ds can play DS game snd HOLY SHIT it can also download old NES and GBA games and I can play them.
Vita comes out eschewing the prior format and comes out with this Passport half-measure in Japan, but then SCEA decides its not important for America, basically slapping loyal customers in the face (as if the Passport program wasn't a slap enough). Worse is that many, many of the games we could download for Vita are not yet available, nor are the PSOne classics and Sony doesn't seem to have any immediate plans for support on those.
Oh and no support at all for PS2 Classic. Just peachy.
People can complain about Nintendo reselling old games if they want, but Nintendo isn't actively trying to prevent people from enjoying older games on new platforms.
Of course, if Sony is just going to spout BS, it might as well just keep its freaking mouth shut. Of all the the reasonable explanations for the Vita not playing UMD games or for the UMD transfer program not being available in the west, they have to go with "You can buy Final Fantasy Tactics for $10" and hope everybody will magically forget about the many other PSP games still being sold for $40 on the PSN. Oh, Sony, you.
Fucking cancer that's killing gaming. Seriously.
If I'm gonna rant, I should get my grammar right I suppose.
He's right, folks. Taking an interest in the industry outside of just buying games is killing gaming!
Someone call Tim Schafer and tell him that all those people who complained that the industry wasn't making the obsolete kinds of games he likes making, and took an interest in the business of gaming enough to crowd-fund the creation one of these obsolete games, that they're actually killing the industry. Those people could have stopped complaining and spent that money on Call of Duty Elite!
Just play games, people. Nothing good can come from taking an interest in anything else.
"Most advanced piece of dedicated gaming hardware ever released in the history of human civilization, and people are bitching about not being able to play they're [sic] obsolete, antiquated media on this new piece of hardware"
It's kind of funny that you would mention this when the majority of my favorite PSP games (Tactics Ogre, Persona 3, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc.) were all "obsolete, antiquated media" when they were first released on the system.
Bottom line, Sony are dumb (and I'm not buying a Vita).
I'm not really sold on the whole re-releasing old games thing. I mean on the one hand, it's given me a chance to play games I missed the first time around, but it is pretty plainly just the gaming equivalent of The Phantom Menace in 3D, ya know? I mean... I dunno. It's up to the individual whether that's a bad thing or not. Seems to work great for Nintendo though. It's selling a handheld for them right now, somehow.
Point being, just to reiterate a very tired point that really shouldn't need reiterating so damned often, buying a game does not, never has, and never will guarantee you the ability to play said game on future hardware. There is no written obligation, nor implied obligation, to support anything but the platform it's currently on. When BC happens, that's certainly cause for celebration, but it's by no means, at all, ever, cause for complaint when it's not. You're not entitled to it, never have been, never will be. Don't be cancerous.
Now we can go back to remembering all those great things complaining has done recently. SOPA is gone, Silent Hill has its voices back, Xenoblade and The Last Story are coming to the US, in part because gamers with a passion for gaming stood up and said something.
Honestly though, just to keep continuity, disagree with me on this point in the future. If everyone catches onto what you're doing, it'll suck all the fun out, man.
*Ignores that no UMD transfer is what murdered PSPGo too*
It's a crappy situation and I feel Sony doesn't really want me to come back into the fold. So whatever, I'll stick with my iPhone.
Have you ever seen a UMD? Its a freakish combination of a cartridge and a cd, unreadable and unrecognizable by literally anything other than a PSP.
When people say "Well do ho ho, my blu-ray player still plays DVDs, I didn't just stop wanting to watch my DVDs once blu-ray came out" they're missing the whole point, which is that their blu-ray player doesn't (unless you have a magic blu ray player) support UMDs, or HitClips, or Betamax.
Adding UMD support would destroy the entire design of the Vita, raise its manufacturing costs and costs to the consumer, take up valuable space, and just generally be totally useless outside of perpetuating a format nobody supported in the first place. This is like getting mad that your GameCube couldnt play N64 games.
Also, not surprising, is that Jim (love ya, you great journalist you) totally left out the part of the article where he actually makes an attempt at clarifying the above quote.
In Japan, where the system is in place, UMD games cost way more than they do here (because they dont sell here), and so the idea was to give you a discount on upgrading your physical $30 game to a $30 digital copy, from anywhere between five to twenty dollars more, but in some cases nearly as much as the game was to begin with. Only about 25% of the PSPs Japanese library even has a digital equivalent, and thats not even to say that each and every game with an equivalent is participating in the program.
This would not have been some magical program where you trade in your UMDs for digital versions, as amazing as that would have been.
I dunno about you, but my first generation DS games work perfectly with my 3DS. I don't mind purchasing remakes of older games because they're just that - remakes. Updated graphics and improved gameplay elements - not a copy paste of the same old, same old.
Repo: The Genetic Opera. It's one of my favourite films and has Anthony Stewart-Head in it.
If anything Nintendo takes 1 step foward and 2 back. They started the motion control fad only to be the only ones to be able to take advantage of it and alienate every third party out there. Then they tried to fix with the Wii motion plus but it was a sinking ship at that point. A system with 75 plus million users and we had to fight to get xenoblade chronicles over here and the announcement of any third party support for the Wii u is considers a success.
foward thinking my ass, experimental definitely but if any thinking was done with the Wii it wouldn't have suffered half the problems it did. It never bodes well when your competitors knock offs can out perform your hardware effortlessly on consoles that weren't even made with that design in mind.
And Sony made profit last year. They ( along with the rest of Japan) just got hit with one of the worst natural disasters ever seen in a while. That's some awful luck for sure but that doesn't instantly rend their businesses model unprofitable, it just means earthquakes are called natural disasters for a reason.
At any rate this crap is getting old, this same bitching came up is when the dsi, and 3ds didnt play gba games, even though we were getting the e shop which was alot better, and gave Nintendo an online foundation they really needed at the time.
Different system same old noise, we removed umds, got a better format, yeah the umd program didn't make it here but i don't exactly recall alot of psp games topping charts so if if was a loss nobody was expressing their opinions back then that's for sure. Still Sony said they put more games up on the store, we get progress and new games and features, a bit of compromising is done but everyone walks away with something.
Call me an optimist but I prefer this situation then to someone outright getting shafted.
Actually, with the exception of Final Fantasy VII, I hadn't owned any of them previously, but I was able to play my original copy of FFVII on the Playstation, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, and PSP via Remote Play.