Sony asks PSP devs for download titles

By Fred Dutton Published 28 January, 2011

NGP can only run digital PSP games.

Sony is asking PSP developers to release downloadable versions of their games so they can played on its new NGP handheld.

Speaking in an interview with Japanese site Impress Watch, as translated by Andriasang, Sony boss Kaz Hirai explained that Sony's new handheld device will be backwards compatible with PSP titles but only those that have been made available as downloads.

As a result, Hirai added, Sony has asked developers to release digital versions of their games.

Hirai also explained that PSP games will run completely through emulation on its new portable system, which was unveiled in Tokyo earlier this week. Users will be able to transfer over any games already downloaded on their PSP as long as they are still within the download limits set by PlayStation Network.

The majority of PSP games are currently available as downloads through PlayStation Store. However, there are a few notable exceptions, including most recently Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep.

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About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (40) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • NotSoSlim #1 1 year ago

    People with loads of UMD games are not going to be happy but not shocked at all about this so heres hoping cheap prices for re-releases

  • TheTrueSpin #2 1 year ago

    "can only run digital PSP games"

    Is this meant to be shocking...? Given that it doesn't have a UMD port, how else would it run them?

  • djcool3005 #3 1 year ago

    Lol pretty much all psp games can be downloaded off the internet anyways. Not saying I'm pirating but since my games are all on UMD theres no fucking way I am gonna pay for the same game twice so the only option is to download the game from some site.

  • jonsaan #4 1 year ago

    The 'majority of psp games' are not really available on PSN at all. Sure there is a wide range but there is a hell of a lot of stuff missing.

    I find it amusing that the main complaint thrown at the current psp is there are no games (Utter BS). Yet loads of people will get up in arms about this news demanding they can play their old games. Sounds good to me as I own a load of downloaded games anyway. If this can encourage devs to put up older missing content then it can only be a good thing.
    Edited by jonsaan at 28/01/11 @ 20:44

  • HiddenAway #5 1 year ago

    I can imagine that the games that haven't been released in downloadable form have some sort of licensing issue that prevents it's release.

    Music or voice rights for example, or in BBS's case, Disney :p.

  • Cataferal #6 1 year ago

    Fully emulated, he says? I'm worried about that, because even the PS3 suffers from slowdown when just playing Minis. How is a portable system with less power than the PS3 supposed to emulate full-blown PSP titles? I hope there won't be compromises, like input buffers, visual glitches or outright incompatibility with some titles (as we saw in the PS2 BC on 60Gb models).

  • mr2ange #7 1 year ago

    Well i can kinda understand it, I have quite a few umd games, but i still have my original psp for them.

    Some of the best games are already on the psn,

    God of War: Chains of Olympus
    God of War: Ghost of Sparta
    Little Big Planet
    Monster Hunter Freedom unite
    All the LocoRoco Games
    Patapon 1+2

    My question is, can i transfer them from my old psp to the new one?

  • rockin_rob_1 #8 1 year ago

    Bit annoying since the playstaion store is stupidly expensive in comparison to hard copy games.

    Still, this was to be expected and at least it compensates the guys who bought the psp go.

  • shogo10 #9 1 year ago

    Unfortunately I don't think anything will come of this, if some devs/publishers haven't already put their psp games up on psn I don't see whats going to change their mind. Its a shame because there would plenty of games that I would like to play without the umd, stuff like persona 3 psp isn't even on the eu/na store. Well at least there's peace walker I guess...

    Its worrying because Sony will really need to make sure that all of ngp's library is available digitally in all regions, if its not what's the point?

  • des #10 1 year ago

    how nice,people that supported real PSP get shit...what about my umd(s)?

  • ianodev #11 1 year ago

    I have a psp go with a fair few games on it. I wonder how you transfer them over, cos I was hopin to trade in my go for the ngp?!!

  • rotsujin #12 1 year ago

    @ianodev Per the article, you can download any games you bought on the PSN onto other devices including the NGP, as long as you're under the limit (5 devices I think).

  • captain_Carl #13 1 year ago

    didn't really expect anything else, as it would be rather hard to come up with any other solution.

  • INSOMANiAC #14 1 year ago

    I imagine they are going to be excellent value for money *smirk*

  • Phredreeke #15 1 year ago

    Hope the emulation is better than the Xbox emulation on the 360 :p

  • Ryze #16 1 year ago

    What's GREAT about this, is that as long as the performance is up to scratch, buying this handheld early on isn't such an annoyance lacking decent launch games.

    You can just jump on the PSN store and grab your favourite 'PSP essentials' for £7.99 each.

    There are some right cracking games on there. This is GOOD (as long as it works properly).

  • chasejamie #17 1 year ago

    Errrrr, Sony could of done this prior to the release of the Go.

  • Hei #18 1 year ago

    They would let us copy our originals games if there wasn't such a level of piracy

  • RodHull #19 1 year ago

    I presume that the NGP will allow folks who have purchased PSP games off PSN to download them again for free?
    Edited by RodHull at 29/01/11 @ 08:44

  • SeesThroughAll #20 1 year ago

    I presume that the NGP will allow folks who have purchased PSP games off PSN to download them again for free?

    Just like when re-downloading owned games to a new PSP, once you associate your PSN account to the NGP, you'll be able to retrieve your downloads list.

  • SeesThroughAll #21 1 year ago

    @Ryze: Indeed. It's a convincing backwards compatibility. I like it. Plus, the NGP instantly benefits from ongoing PSP support. minis :)

  • Mono_X #22 1 year ago

    This sounds a little dodgy. are devs and publishers really going to make the effort to re-release old PSP games on PSN for the NGP?

    Are people who just shelled out for a NGP really going to care about paying over the odds to DL games that look worse than PS2 games?

    It sounds a little like 'OMG we don't have enough NGP games for launch, quick distract everyone with PSP games'!

  • CB.Gamestation #23 1 year ago

    I was under the impression NGP was going to use DS style cartridges. Or is it 100% digital distribution? If it is DD why are retailers happy about it? :(

  • Toothball #24 1 year ago

    It's about time they started encouraging developers and publishers to re-release games on PSN. Would have made owning a PSP Go a less distressing experience. Part of my reasoning of getting a Go was the expectation that backwards compatibility would work like this, so it would have been nice to expand my digital selection a bit more already. Having said that, I've still been able to make a decent start on it.

    Oh, I would refute the claim that "The majority of PSP games are currently available as downloads through PlayStation Store". I've only seen maybe a quarter of my UMDs released on PSN so far, and see plenty more every time I glance at the PSP racks in shops. The list was longer than I thought it would be though.

    @rotsujin

    The limit is five devices, but you can also unlink devices from your account and link new ones as you get them. Should mean that the limit isn't really an issue unless you decide to buy six NGPs for some reason.
    Edited by Toothball at 29/01/11 @ 11:32

  • dfish #25 1 year ago

    i might actually consider buying a psp go, now that i can transfer all my psn stuff when the NGP comes out and use the go as trade-in. backward compatibility is great news I'm surprised they didn't mention it at the PS meeting.

  • old_skool #26 1 year ago

    I was a bit worried what would happen to my PSP game downloads once the PSP went the way of the dodo, but this really is great news as another piece of hardware can now play them.

  • vizzini #27 1 year ago

    That is a good idea

    But one concern I have, is about the 10 free titles downloads promotion; there is only a handful of those games I'd want to keep (like Gran Turismo, LittleBigPlanet, Motorstorm Arctic Edge, Wipeout Pure), but it is important that Sony confirm that their own titles will at least be transferable under the rules.

  • Mono_X #28 1 year ago

    @doomed_soul89

    You're sort of missing the point of what I'm saying. As far as I can see, pretty much all new PSP games get a PSN release?

    Sony want devs and publishers to re-release old PSP games onto the PSN store for the release of the NGP.

    This will require a resub through Sony's submission process (which will likely have changed since the games original release), so needs a rebuild, another QA run and a resub through Sony's TRC - none of these are free or even cheap.

    And what for? To re-release a old game at a price that will probably be higher than buying it on UMD.

    And seriously, who's going to buy it?
    -Anyone who has a PSP and wants it will have bought it on UMD, buying it a second time for the NGP is just a waste of money.
    -Anyone who has just spent hundreds of pounds on a NGP and never owned a PSP won't be interested in old PSP games (otherwise they'd have bought a PSP by now - especially since their going to be hardcore early adaptors).
    -The only people I can see being interested are those who bought a PSPgo but have never owned a PSP. And I don't think there are many of those about.

    It sounds like nothing but a waste of time, resources and money to me.

  • dangerousbrian0 #29 1 year ago

    funny how sony was origanly going to release the playstation as a sperate add on for the snes.if they was going to do that before what ever happened between them and nintendo then why can they not release a psp umd drive that you attach to the back of the ngp and make it use the ngp battery life but then again it will probably make the battery life a lot shorter.Orif that will not work then why cant the umd drive read the disc then you have the option to install the game and it copys the game to some sort of storage device like a portable memory card or something like that for the ngp like a pc or a ps3 does with a cd. then you just run it off the ngp no problem.but then again its all about money because if they did that they would lose money on all of us rebuying our psp titles from psn
    Edited by dangerousbrian0 at 29/01/11 @ 15:40

  • toy_brain #30 1 year ago

    Cool, nice to have full PSN and PSP backwards-compatability confirmed.
    I have about 30 PSP games on UMD - so I'll have to keep my 3000 around for those, but more recent games I've tried to get on PSN as long as the prices were not insane, so I'll have plenty to load onto my NGP when I eventually go buy one.
    The other nice thing is that this works in favour of companies still making PSP games (yes they do exist!). There shouldn't be any sort of drop-off in PSP software if they know new NGP owners are also potential customers, which means XSeed can keep on localising Falcom's mammoth-huge Legend of Heroes RPG saga without fear of a shrinking audience ^_^

    NGP screen resolution is exactly double the pixels in each direction, so scaling the image up should present no problems at all.
    Sounds like Sony really thought about backwards-compatability from the get-go.
    Gotta keep those Monster Hunter fans happy!

  • vizzini #31 1 year ago

    I agree with the rest of what you said, but the line below isn't true.

    It's just a matter of putting it on psn and paying Sony a little bit they don't have to rebuilt anything

    The ability to pause/resume games on PSP Go requires reprogramming to ensure the game suspends and then needs tested. Downloaded games also need to support a game manual via the Playstation button/XMB (when the game is loaded) as they don't ship with one; so these TRCs/features need to be added properly by the developer.

  • des #32 1 year ago

    Sony can ask all they want,but don't they charge devs for bandwidth?...at least devs say that

    In some recent interview some big Sony boss made it very clear that not all ngp games will have both retail and download versions...
    big games(made by Sony presumably)...both
    small games...download only
    there rest is up to devs,some will,some won't...meaning,majority will have retail and you will have to wait for dd version

    Unless Sony starts paying devs for releasing PSP games...little chance

  • ZeroAX #33 1 year ago

    "The majority of PSP games are currently available as downloads through PlayStation Store."

    *cough* bullshit *cough* *cough*

  • zedzee #34 1 year ago

    Well, it looks like I'm going to keep my current PSPslim then, because there's no f*cking way I'm paying for the same games again, as downloads. All my games are on UMD - I've not jointed into the BS of "download onlly" - a al PSPgo.

    It's a shame that Sony are doing a half-arsed solution again (in emulation, to boot), much like the fiasco of BC on the PS3.

    Do they also not understand that the sales of the current PSP models have only been possible because the original consumers bought the UMD model, all those man years ago?

    Why are they treating these customers with contempt?!

  • SeesThroughAll #35 1 year ago

    I decided to gradually begin trading in all my UMD games and replace them by digital downloads over a year ago.
    I still have quite a few UMDs to go, but by the time the NGP is here, I will already be able to play (at least the majority of) my favorite PSP games in the new device. If ever I've seen a compelling argument for digital format, I think BC has got to be it.

  • amiga_dude #36 1 year ago

    Do not tell me this is a physical issue like real UMD but rather a legal issue. Software emulating a UMD drive is easy thing to do. The real issue is legal ie

    1) MUSIC contracts
    2) developer contracts

    Geting them to sign the deal again is an issue as it download it could say UMD. I would be amazed if a developer contract thing, if it is the publisher should sack there legal team!

  • SYS64738 #37 1 year ago

    My DVD player can't load my old VCR tapes TEH OUTRAGE!!!111!!!!

  • onyxbox #38 1 year ago

    All I'm going to say is that I still love using my PSP. I've been playing games on my iPhone too mostly because the device is always with me but I still enjoy the odd game on PSP and I'm glad they're letting people import their older downloaded titles and as a result I won't feel so bad about purchasing PSP games over the coming months.

  • sanctusmortis #39 1 year ago

    Hopefully, save game transfers are just the easy matter of transferring between memory cards.

  • BonzoBanana #40 1 year ago

    Considering how powerful and easy to develop for the NGP is PSP emulation should be rock solid. The PS3 requires so much optimisation to work correctly that it slows development down. The PS3 is a powerful console but also an overly complicated one for developers. I'm so glad Sony ditched the cell for the NGP.

    I wonder if commercial shop bought NGP games will be released later than the digital versions? That would annoy me I have to say but its perfectly possible that Sony will do that to encourage digital downloads over normal retail versions.