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.

We weren’t really sure what Sony meant when they said they would come up with some way to compensate those who own PSP UMD games but want to upgrade to the download only PSP Go. We now have a slightly better idea of what Sony is going to do, and it may not be exactly what you were hoping for.

Sony is offering Europeans the chance to take part in a rewards program, which involves placing a UMD in your existing PSP then downloading a special PSPgo theme from PSN. After doing this you should be sent an email containing a voucher code which you can exchange in return for three free downloads out of a choice of 17 full games. Some of the games include Killzone: Liberation (I own this, and it’s actually pretty good), SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3, Everybody’s Golf, WipEout Pure, Echochrome, LocoRoco, Patapon and Buzz!: Master Quiz. The offer is open to anybody who owns an existing PSP model, plus at least one game, who buys and registers a PSPgo from its release on 1st October until 31st March next year.

So, while you may not be able to turn your existing purchases into a free download it’s certainly better than nothing if you’re set on buying a PSPgo. People with a large library of UMD games are going to be disappointed, there’s little doubt about that, but I’m finding it hard to figure out how Sony would be able to turn your existing purchases into downloads anyway. How can you prove that you own a game, especially if it was bought a few years back? There must be some way of doing it, and I doubt Sony will be losing many sales by coming up with a solution as the majority of people are unlikely to buy another copy of something they already own.

Like some Dutch retailers I don’t really care for the PSPgo. A smaller screen and more cramped controls doesn’t really do much for me, especially as memory sticks are getting cheaper all the time. I don’t use my PSP much, but if I do buy a game I can now choose to between a UMD or a download, which is far better than only having one option.

Although it’s probably not going to be much of a surprise to the majority of Starcraft fans – although it will be a big disappointment – the sequel to one of the most popular RTS games of all time has been delayed until the first half of 2010. Of course, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty was never actually given a release date in the first place but people were still hoping that we would see it sometime this year, mainly through comments made by staff working for Activision Blizzard.

Apparently the delay is due to the relaunch of Activision Blizzard’s Battle.net service, which handles all the online gaming across their range of games. It will also play a large part in the online aspects of Starcraft II, especially as LAN support has been pulled from the game. One of the development team had this to say;

“Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service.” - Source

Activision Blizzard had previously stated that Starcraft II will need a four to six month beta period, which obviously made a 2009 launch seem very tight to begin with. We still have no idea when a beta will actually take place, so in the meantime you will have to be satisfied with the Battle Reports that the developers have posted on the game’s official site.

The delay will also affect Activision Blizzard’s revenue expectations for this year, lowering their estimate from $4.3 billion to $4.05 billion. It’s not all doom and gloom though, as Diablo II is also expected to be released in 2010.

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The expansion to 2007’s World in Conflict, World in Conflict: Soviet Assault, was due to come to consoles later this year; despite the fact that the original game was only ever released on the PC.  However, unfortunately Ubisoft have now officially cancelled the games release on consoles, with the PC version remaining unaffected.

Suspicions were raised about the status of the console versions development in January, when Ubisoft gave us a release date for the PC but never mentioned anything about the supposed console versions. This may have something to do with Ubisoft already having an RTS franchise on consoles; that being EndWar.

Oh well, at least now we can start to come to terms with the fact that RTS games on consoles are usually pretty dire anyway.

For you lucky PC gamers the expansion lets you take command of the Soviet forces, and will include both the original game and the expansion. If you already own the original game then you have the option of downloading the expansion on its own come 12th March.

Never played the highly rated original and don’t want to wait? It’s currently available for £22.93.

If there’s one big pointer that a film may turn out to be utter trash it’s when the studio releasing it decides not to hold early screenings for film critics. This is what has happened with Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, which means that critics will have to go to the cinema with the rest of us Average Joes on its 27th February release date.

It also means that those of us sceptical about the films quality (which is probably most of us) will have to go to the cinema blind as there will be no reviews available for us to read beforehand. Of course, most of us probably don’t read reviews either but Fox can rake in a bit more cash from those who would usually read the review first, but seeing there are none would buy a ticket to see it anyway.

What would I do? Well, if Fox doesn’t have enough faith in the film to screen it to critics beforehand then why should we have any faith to put down our hard earned cash when we might be going to see an incredibly bad film?

Whatever the case let’s just hope that it turns out to be a better film than the incredibly awful first Street Fighter film. I have to link that to show you how cheap you can buy it for, but trust me on this - even if it was free it’s totally not worth wasting your time watching it. Even the presence of a young Kylie Minogue can save that film, and the Devil himself counts it as one of the worst tortures he can give. It’s THAT bad!

Oh well, at least we have Street Fighter IV which, coincidently, was released today.

Street Fighter movie not being screened for critics - The Cut Scene (Variety)

If you don’t have a Xbox 360 and have been holding out for a PC version of the RPG Fable II then you may be out of look. Community manager ‘Woody’ stated on the Lionhead forums that, “We’re not working on a PC version of Fable II“.

Don’t give up all hope yet, as ‘Woody’ added, “if this changes we’ll make sure you know about it on our website(s)”. I know it’s not much to go off, but it’s not an outright no, is it? Plus, who knows? They may be holding back something we don’t know!

The original Fable was ported to PC, along with the expansion pack Fable: The Lost Chapters, so I don’t see why it’s so hard to port Fable II over to the PC. Maybe it’s due to economy and they don’t think PC gaming is financially viable right now, but I’m just pulling at strings here.

If you are an Xbox 360 gamer, and you don’t have Fable II yet, then I highly recommend you do something to rectify this situation. In my opinion it’s the second best RPG the 360 has to offer (the first being Fallout 3) and an excellent addition to any gamers library.