I love the rumors floating around on some sites of sony PSP "kiosks" where you insert your umd game and it copies to your psp go! and gives you license to it. This would be the same as giving away every umd based game fro free due to rental services unless the kiosks crushed the umd when they were done. Even then, it would cost sony a small fortune to do, and just think of what hackers could do if they got ahold of that hardware.
Not in the slightest IMO... I'd be stunned if it included UMD support. Look at the iPhone as a good model for a digital storefront/distribution. Only reason UMD would be valuable would be if Sony was making money on selling UMDs... and that business is dead, dead, dead.
Removing the UMD drive would be a huge mistake if this is simply yet another version of the same console.
If they ditch UMD support, they'll completely alienate their current customers and, in all likelyhood, convince them to not purchase the new version purely because their existing library would be rendered unplayable. While my stack of PSP games isn't nearly as large as my DS library, I'd still be extremely leery of purchasing a revised version of a system I already own if I can't even play games I've already purchased for said system.
I like the idea of going entirely digital distribution, but it's a move that should really wait for their next generation handheld, not their latest revision of existing hardware.
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Just saw someone in a fur coat walking a dog. "I love to take care of animals AND wear them!" If only they were holding a burger.
Removing the UMD drive would be a huge mistake if this is simply yet another version of the same console.
If they ditch UMD support, they'll completely alienate their current customers and, in all likelyhood, convince them to not purchase the new version purely because their existing library would be rendered unplayable. While my stack of PSP games isn't nearly as large as my DS library, I'd still be extremely leery of purchasing a revised version of a system I already own if I can't even play games I've already purchased for said system.
I like the idea of going entirely digital distribution, but it's a move that should really wait for their next generation handheld, not their latest revision of existing hardware.
You are assuming you are the target. You are already a PSP owner. This, if true, is clearly to expand the base. Dropping the UMD makes for a cheaper unit with better battery life.
No one will be forcing you to upgrade. Sony needs to grow the audience, and control the piracy, and make it attractive to developers (which dropping UMD does, in fact, do). They don't really NEED you to upgrade. They won't complain if you do, mind you.
Also, I don't know that the PSP needs to upgrade the hardware. Portable gaming doesn't need the power of the PS3, it's already more powerful then the DSi. At most I'd maybe up the processor speed a little (since you are saving so much battery life by not have the UMD, you can afford it) and up the built in memory. Flash memory is very cheap to sony; they make it.
Have you looked into the Pocket PC / Smartphone / Palm areas? Sure, no joysticks... but... I used to do Pocket PC reviews, it's a fairly open system and it had a fairly large amount of games. A good deal have been ported over to the iPhone at drastically reduced prices. Anyone could build an app (free versions of the tools were / are available), sites like handango.com sells the commercial ones.
Yes, I've been lucky enough that my job has afforded me free access to a Palm device (running WM5) and now I have use a HTC Mogul (running WM6.1) and I love it! I really like the ability to remote desktop to a PC in my house (or anywhere for that matter) as well as all of the other types of things I can do with Windows Mobile 6.1.
That Pandora link is more of what I'm talking about, did you see that?
