If you had an awesome PSP game and were looking forward to continuing your progress on your Vita through Sony’s UMD conversion plan, it’s time to start picking tombstones out for your save files. In an article from 1Up, it has been confirmed that Sony will not be offering a way to copy your UMD to your PS Vita. However, you WILL be able to play PSP games if you downloaded them from PSN/SEN (same thing) as you can carry them over using the same account you had on your PSP.
This really grinds my gears, as Peter Griffin would say. It’s one thing to shut down a program you had been touting as a feature, but this isn’t the first time Sony has snuck in bad news like this. The PSP Go was slated to have a similar feature, but that too was scrapped and the PSP Go offered little more than a bite-sized download-only PSP with a slide-out screen you were nervous would break every time you opened it due to a flimsy plastic feel. Sony claimed piracy concerns as a reason the conversion was scrapped, as people could theoretically share their UMDs with each other, copy the game, and build their libraries without Sony seeing an extra dime.
So far, the PS Vita started out hot in Japan, sunk to extreme lows and has yet to recover in sales. I truly want to love the PS Vita and see it do well in the USA, and I still would like to own one. That said, you’ll need to spend a pretty penny to do so. As the 1Up article also noted, the game library has not been digitally discounted as much as one would expect, the memory cards are still obscenely highly priced, not to mention required to even boot some titles (MLB 12: The Show, for example.)
While not having PSP games carried over to the PS Vita doesn’t bother me so much in and of itself, it does bother me that this was brought to the public and ripped away TWICE. Dear Sony, please keep a lid on any prospective features until you know it will happen, or you’ll see yet another bargain bin handheld before you can say “It only does everything.” The fact is, as much as the PS Vita does do, there is still a lot it will not, and that’s a problem when you’re trying to sell people on a home console-priced portable system.
How do you feel about the PS Vita not being able to carry over UMD games from the PSP? Leave a comment below or tell us in our forums!