Sony shifts to digital downloads with handheld PSP Go

When I first saw and held the new handheld gaming console from Sony, I loved it. It was in L.A. in July at E3, one of those times when any chance to shed some weight—off my kit, not my body—appeals to me.

Dubbed the PSP Go, Sony’s latest revision to the PlayStation Portable is smaller, lighter, and slides open to reveal the main controls, which have good response. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are built-in, and closing the slide screen with the power on turns it into an analogue clock.

While the new device, which will retail for $249.99, becomes available on October 1, I got my hands on one of the black units (the other colour choice is white) last weekend.

The 16-gigabyte Go is definitely lighter than its predecessors, about the same weight as an iPhone or BlackBerry. The 3.8-inch LCD screen is crisp and bright, ideal for close-up video watching, and the sliding feature makes the Go more appealing as a media device. Skype and Internet radio functionality is pre-installed.

But when it was time to see how the Go was for playing games, I found myself in a bit of a hitch. As slick as the new handheld is, I can’t play any of my existing PSP games on it, because the Go was designed without a Universal Media Disc drive. The UMD is Sony’s proprietary disc format. In fact, one of the reasons the Go is smaller and lighter is because it is UMD-free.

I’m in favour of scrapping the UMD, especially as more of our entertainment content becomes available by digital download. In the past year, games and movies for the PSP have been available digitally, but the majority of the PSP catalogue is still on UMD.

So existing PSP owners with libraries of games on UMD are like all those kids who started buying CDs four years ago. Their UMDs have become irrelevant and useless.

Sony had been working on a “conversion program” for those with UMDs, but a Sony Computer Entertainment of America spokesperson told Kotaku the program has been scrapped “due to legal and technical reasons”.

So the Go may look beautiful, and be nice to hold in my hand, but it isn’t immediately useful until there is content available to use.

That will change with great rapidity, however, as all content becomes available for digital download. Because the Go was designed for the future where content is loaded directly onto our devices and all discs become irrelevant.

Sony expects that 16,000 pieces of digital content will be available on October 1, including 225 games.

Games for the PSP can already be downloaded from the on-line PlayStation Store, and the Go can access those titles in one of three ways.

First, using a Windows XP, Vista, or 7 enabled computer running Sony’s Media Go software, which is provided free.

Games can also be downloaded onto a PS3 console. Titles purchased in either of those ways are then transferred onto the Go with a USB cable.

The third way to get content onto the Go is to download directly to the device. It’s wireless enabled, so doing so requires only that you connect to an available wireless network.

If you want to move media off the Go, you’ll need to use Memory Stick Micro (M2), the new removable media format used by the device. This is the other characteristic of the Go that is a bit frustrating for existing PSP owners, who likely already have a selection of the slightly larger Memory Stick Pros lying around.

But the future of our entertainment and media—a future that is anticipated by the Go—will make discs and flash cards largely inconsequential.