This Just In (credit to deviantgamer)

[Dangwoot]

BY KRIS ERICKSON | POSTED ON MAR 3, 2009

Acclaim developer David Perry and Sony Europe boss John Koller have been having a bit of a public showdown over the new iteration of the PSP. Perry surprised the gaming community last week when he issued a short message over twitter claiming that he knew the PSP 2 was coming and that it had no UMD drive to speak of. Then, later in the week Sony spokesman John Koller went on record saying that Sony remains "committed to the UMD format".

Many gamers and journalists have wondered what might replace UMD if Perry is correct and Sony really is going to phase out the clunky optical storage media. We won’t be sad to see them go, honestly – slow load times and a drain on battery life made the optical disk format more of a drag than an asset. But how will those without high-speed internet connections or access to Wifi purchase games, if Sony removes the UMD packaging from shelves?

Well, one answer to the storage question is already in front of us – Sony could copy Nintendo. With the rapidly declining price of solid-state memory like SD cards, and Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick Pro Duo, why not just slap games on a specially designed cartridge? Load times would be instantaneous, battery drain would be minimized, and consumers would still be able to pick up titles in the shops. If you are worried about price, don’t be. A 2 GB memory card can currently be had for around $6. By the time the PSP 2 ships in 2010 or 2011, we expect the price of solid-state memory cards to be even lower.

[Bootlegninja]

nice.

[spud42]

so how are we going to play our UMD games on a PSP 2 ? lol... and what sort of protection will the mem stick games have to prevent wholesale piracy?

[yoshi314]

so...one guy says new psp won't have umd. sony brass is commited to keeping umd alive.

and then we have some speculation on ssd in psp, or wider use of memory sticks.

so what are the facts, aside from 'sony is committed to umd format?". all i can see is pointless speculation.

[Bootlegninja]

well, they had better have a mail in program to send in the UMD's, and you get back MS pro duo that will work on both the psp and psp2

seems like a logical thing, but this is the modern sony we're talking about. they screw up for a pass time.

[yoshi314]

the thing with psp is, that there are already LOTS of people using umd. they cannot just abandon them, and release a new psp that would make all currently purchased umd disks useless.

suddenly cutting off that group might be suicidal for sony - think about all the people that already have umd versions of their games.

but i guess sony does not care much about their customers - why do we have to buy ps1 games *again* to be able to legally play them on psp?

i guess it's just not enough for sony that some people still have the ps1 disks around.

[Dangwoot]

i was thinking perhaps they would offer a trade in program as bootleg said it makes sense send us your umd's and get them back on a stick....lol though i could go into detail how this would be a disaster but meh.