Sony may have abandoned the PlayStation Portable’s UMD format for Vita, but gamers will still be able to opt for physical copies of games if they so choose. The PSP Go experimented with the idea of a digital-only system in 2009, so why isn’t the Vita — being released in December in Japan and early 2012 elsewhere — also eschewing physical media? It all comes down to a matter of digital not being right for everyone at this point in time.
“We believe, for some consumers, the time is [right], but for other consumers, the time is still not [right],” Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida told Edge. “So we believe the time is still not right to go download-only as a platform. Some PS Vita titles, like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, will be close to 4GB in size, which could be too large to download for consumers who do not have a fast broadband connection. Also, some consumers like shopping in retail stores, talking to knowledgeable store clerks, buying and playing games on the spot. We do not want to remove that capability from consumers.”
Fortunately for those who do wish to abandon the need for physical games, Sony has indicated more than once that all Vita retail games will be available as downloads. (There will be some downloadable games that can’t be found at retail, but by and large those should be smaller titles as opposed to something on par with Uncharted.) This is very good news, and it’s nice to see Sony learned from the PSP Go. Those who purchased the device had spent a premium to go digital-only and then were unable to play the entire back catalog of PSP games because many titles were not available on the PlayStation Store. To make matters worse, the lack of sales and competitively-priced content (as compared with what could be found at retail) made owning a Go a less than attractive prospect.
