Sony Connect To Hook Up With PlayStation Portable?

An anonymous reader writes "UK video game site C&VG has posted a story rumoring Sony's PlayStation Portable handheld game console will allow both music and games to be downloaded via the newly announced Sony Connect online download store. An industry source quoted in the article says: 'PSP is intended to be able to link up with Sony Connect to offer digital music for download, but the bigger deal is the plan to put PSP games up there for download eventually, too.' C&VG says this rumor, if true, shows 'Sony's alleged drive to ultimately cut-out retail and handle distribution of software itself' - we'll find out for sure next week at E3." Elsewhere, GamePro/Famitsu interviews leading Japanese PSP developers, with Atlus producer Hideyuki Yokoyama saying: "I expect downloads and fees to be the primary business model."

Important Question

[tcgwebs]

Will they allow "classic" PS1/PS2 games to be downloaded in the same way?

So iTMS to sell iPods

[foidulus]

Andy Sony Connect to sell PSPs. Though actually this time I think it will work in reverse, PSPs will sell Sony Connect since I would imagine the primary motiviation of most people who will plunk down the few hundred dollars for one of these bad boys is not to listen to music :P Maybe Sony is hoping that it will generate revenue for the Sony Connect(since Sony has it's own music label, they stand to make a lot more money if the Sony store becomes successful, since they will be collecting the 70 cent royalties, provided people buy Sony's music)

Thoughts

[clu76]

Not a bad idea. But I feel Sony might be doing themselves a disservice by making the PSP an all purpose device. It has great potential to suffer from a serious identity crisis.

It plays games, movies, music, it slices, it dices, and can still easily cut through a tomato. But unless it excels in every feature, might be better to buy devices dedicated to one purpose. I personally don't want to use the PSP for music playback if it isn't going to be as good or better than my ipod. my $0.02

Downloadable games

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy enough to pirate the seemingly crackproof media PS2 uses but it would be even easier to pirate a PSP game. whats to stop me from downloading one from alt.binaries.games instead of sonys online store?

So what security measures are there if any to stop pirating...

Hmm just let me enter my cdkey..

up down X R1 L1 L2 start select triangle!

Surprised? I'm not.

[Thedalek]

Didn't anyone else notice that Sony was touting the new discs to be used in the PSP as a new end-user storage media (meaning not exclusive to games)? How they went on and on about how the PSP was going to be the new Walkman? How they talked about watching movies and listening to music on it?

Great idea

[Lord_Dweomer]

This is great. Even better if the PSP could wirelessly download it from a hotspot or something. My big question though is once you've downloaded the music/movies/media to your PSP, will you be able to transfer it to your computer? Or will you just have to leave it on the PSP, and repurchase it once you've deleted it because you needed to make room for other files?

Re:Interesting move

[gl4ss]

There's other players in the arena already..

Most of n-gages sales and software seem to lie in the online stores. Series60 software(that runs on the n-gage as well other s60 phones) is mostly available only online, including the best games available for it(such as Sky Force, which is an excellent shoot'em'up in 1942 style, which imho is better than any of the n-gage only games). Though, maybe they're looking for a way to get a cut of that side of the action with their own store.

however, I kinda doubt you won't be able to be a (real) developer as easily for their system without paying any license fees as you can be for the symbian(or for the j2me devices) at the moment.

Re:Great idea

[News for nerds]

Small games and other data you created on PSP can be exported only to a Sony memory stick with MagicGate supported, I guess. Data you don't create such as large movies and games will be only for physical unrewritable UMD media to store contents which big boys will supply.
As for connectivity to PC, a software with DRM, which is something like Windows Media 9 Series, may be supplied from Sony to manage MagicGate-protected data which originally belong to PSP.

I don't know about you but I rather own my games.

[ITR81]

I don't want to DL games (dialup like over 50% of the US). I like having actual instructions and not some .pdf file of it. I actually like to touch my games and collect them. I will not subscribe or rent my games from Sony.

Another Q? How can they sell it at $299 or less when in Japan they have stated a $699 price range?? Sounds like they will be taking a Xbox route on this one.

I think I'll be going with the Nintendo DS which will also play the entire GB lib...and probably still cost less.

Re:Downloadable games

[Anonymous Coward]

How are you going to burn those little discs?

Well if sony makes it's PSP games downloadable theres no need to burn any discs.

It sounds like sony might have to rely on some DRM type system for it's downloadable games instead of the classic read only storage medium used for console games such as cartreges and GDROMS... anyway these sorta things can't be copied.

Sony plans to just sell pure software so you can put that into your PSP and play it. No hardware protection no safe storage media. Smartdisks are read/write. If a clever programmer defeats the software protection ( where have we heard that before ) it's a simple as upload your pirated game to your PSP and play.

I think the whole downloadable games thing for PSP is bound to be big piracy issue and no doubt someone will find a way to exploit the more "open" gaming system sony seems to be going for at the expense of honest gamers.

On the other hand... PSP linux? Dare to dream :)~