How Will Sony Solve the Old UMD Problem?
With its super-small PSP Go coming to shops soon, Sony has a big-sized problem brewing on the horizon. How will users who already own an older model of PSP transfer their UMD games to the 16GB internal storage of the PSP Go? Surely, Sony can’t expect us to buy all of our old games again in digital form, so they must be considering various options to placate those gamers with a big pile of UMDs. Here, we consider a few options of the table for Sony, whose “goodwill” program has been announced but not clarified in any significant way, less than two months before the launch of the PSP Go. The PSP Go, which has no UMD drive like previous models of the handheld, is an experiment in digital distribution. The company expects that the small device, which features a sliding screen and Wifi internet connectivity, will entice users who value the freedom of a digital-only distribution model. The problem for Sony is that there might not be all that many new customers out there who have been on the
