As I somewhat speculated yesterday Sony have confirmed that PSP owners will officially be unable to transfer their UMD games to the digital-only PSPgo system upon its release next week. This means, obviously, that you will be unable to play any of the PSP games you currently own on the new iteration of the PSP, if you decide to upgrade of course.

Sony officially ended any hope for such a program by releasing a statement to Kotaku;

“We were evaluating a UMD conversion program, but due to legal and technical reasons we will not be offering the program at this time,” - Source

Sony originally said that they would try to find a way for people who own UMD games to transfer their purchases to digital form so they could be played o the PSPgo. The statement released yesterday does leave a small window open for the future, but it’s pretty unlikely that we will ever see such a program. There was a rumour that Sony would install kiosks in various shops, which would allow people to turn their existing UMD games into digital form. Sony probably figured that would be too expensive, so we’re left with no options at all (well, no legal ones anyway).

Like I said before, you’re probably better off sticking with your old PSP than splashing out for a new one. Sony is still trying to tempt you in with the reward program, but it’s not worth the asking price of a PSPgo purchase (which, in my opinion, is overpriced anyway). For everyone else the PSPgo is a good purchase if you’re willing to pay the high price (which, in Denmark, is ridiculously priced as high as a PS3). I wouldn’t have said that any PSP was worth it a few years back, but the library of games, downloadable PSOne classics and the upcoming PSP Minis it’s not a bad purchase. To be totally honest though it doesn’t really matter what model you get (although you do get more choice with an older PSP), unless you’re the kind of person who needs to have the latest version of a gadget, even if it seems like a step backwards.