Sony Wants To Enable Legal PSP Downloading Of Classics From Non-Sony Platforms

[wraggster]

Sony has been talking to publishers about bringing classics from beyond the Sony console family to the PSP’s download service.
***
The PSP may not just be (legally) a system for PlayStation games anymore.
Sony is in discussions with game publishers for companies to bring their back-catalogue to digital download on the PlayStation Network and is interested in past games from beyond the PlayStation family.
“In general there’s a lot of discussion about [publishers'] back catalogs that will finally find its way to PlayStation Network in the back half of this year,” John Koller, Sony’s head of U.S. marketing for PlayStation hardware said in an interview with MTV Multiplayer late last week.
“PSOne is included, but everything is on the table…We look for some of those big hits from all of the past games in their history and look for ways we can bring them over. It’s not always easy. There’s obviously technical areas that need to be bridged. But when those are solved, consumers will see a wide variety of retro games and brand new games coming to PSN.”
Sony’s talks with publishers is part of a 2009 goal to greatly improve the offering of digital games available to PSP users through the PlayStation Network. To accomplish this, a few tactics are being employed:
Sony’s internal studios are preparing more internally developed download-only titles.
Sony is working to bring more of its PSOne back catalog to the U.S. market, to catch up with the flood of PSOne releases available digitally in Japan. (”Those are being worked on now,” Koller said. Of the regional disparity, he added: “That’ll change.)”
The company is preparing to being more PS3 PSN titles to PSP for download, in the vein of “Flow” and the upcoming “PixelJunk Monsters.”
And Sony is reaching out to other publishers for their back catalogues, now appearing to expand their interest to non-PlayStation platforms, a broader multi-console appetite seen elsewhere in services like GameTap or Nintendo’s Virtual Console.
The drive to digital content is backed up by Sony’s sense that this is what consumers want. “We know that 50 percent of our base, plus, is interested in downloadable games for pay, not for free, from the network,” Koller said. “That’s something that needs to be acted on.”
Naturally, many non-Sony games are being played on the PSP already anyway. The system has been hacked since the day of its release to play pirated games from many classic systems, including those from Sony rival Nintendo. It’s impossible to fathom Sony bringing Nintendo games to the PSP, but any efforts short of that may finally reach hackers — and millions of paying consumers — more than halfway.

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/...sp/#more-20671

[apex05]

Finally Sony's starting to get a clue, they always left out software they have to pay a license for like Flash and Divx etc. But the last few weeks show they've not given up on it completely

[Veskgar]

Well DUH! Obviously the PSP has great appeal to be like a little virtual console such as the Wii.

Very late on SONY's part. But if newer PSP's don't get cracked for custom firmware, at least official firmware users can play classic retro games as well....... For a significant price most likely.

Wii virtual Console games are expensive if you ask me.

[Buddy4point0]

Well the next step is to allow user created content and to have it sellable by the user like the iPhone app store and maybe some people would actually use official firmware.
Keep going Sony.

[Art]

Hooray for pretend homebrew!!!

[dangee]

you gotta respect Sony for taking on the hackers with their tech
teams rather than through the legal system.

But this news makes me suspect they must have some kinda furtive
admiration for the achievements of EMU homebrewers that already had
a very similar concept up & running 3+ years ago.

[blaz3d]

this is nice to see, classics are exactly that. as long as the pricing is reasonable this is a great idea.

[mike_jmg]

Sounds nice, I would really like to see how this ends

But nintendo's classics are not very likely to be included, even so it would be awesome If they could participate on this

[robotdevil]

Still, another area people are forgetting about is when custom firmware is made out of the officially supported emu enabled firmware, such as with the PSOne emu on my PSP now...

[kharaboudjan]

one of the most interesting news for the psp for a long time.

perhaps it will be saturn, dreamcast, N64 and games frpm such classic consoles?

would be the coolest thing ever if that would happen. if it is just games from 8 bit and 16 bit era it is like nothing. we have already been able to play all those games for many years now.