A very unfortunate announcement was made by Sony Computer Entertainment North America this week. According to an official announcement by the company, the PlayStation Vita UMD Passport program will not be available for the owners of PS Vita in the U.S. The UMD Passport program allows users to buy the digital copies of their favorite PSP games that they already have at a very low price. These games would be downloaded on your PS Vita to play on the new handheld console.
PlayStation Vita made its debut last month in Japan, and since then, the owners of the new handheld have been enjoying the UMD Passport program. To buy a game at a very low price, Sony only required the owners to provide a unique code found on the physical copy of the game. This unique code was then entered in the PlayStation Network application that would then allow them to buy games at approximately $1.30, which would otherwise cost around $30.
One of the main reasons why the UMD Passport program didn’t make it to the U.S was because of the cost of the digital license. The prices of digital licenses cost differently in Japan than the U.S. When PlayStation Vita was launched, it had support for only about 200 PSP games available on the PS Network. Sony had already promised to support more games later on.
The news of UMD Passport may cause a significant decline in the sale of PlayStation Vita in the U.S, however, the digital copies of PSP games on the PlayStation Network are starting mostly at $10 – $20, which isn’t quite bad. There is quite a high chance that the prices of the titles available in the U.S are similarly priced as the UMD Passport program.
This may not be the worst news we have seen so far. According to the new generation of consoles, both leading game consoles have already dropped the backward compatibility of previous console games. When new generations of consoles arrive, we can safely assume that there will no longer be support for backward compatibility.
