UMD stopped being a promising format for Sony a while ago, and while PSPgo was a not-so-great attempt to ditch UMD and move all-digital, until a successor showed up, Sony was stuck with UMD.
The question, then, is what to do with all those UMDs; Vita doesn’t accept them. Sony openly talked about doing a UMD trade-in program of some variety for PSPgo--but it never happened.
Talk has resumed for Vita, with Sony openly saying details on such a program are coming in an online FAQ noticed by Andriasang.
The Google translated version is messy, but here’s a gist: Sony will allow owners of UMD games to gain access to digital versions at a special price. What will happen to the original UMDs and what the “special price” becomes is something that will be “announced at a later date.”
It’s unclear whether Sony will be rolling out a similar service over here, but given how little we know about Vita outside of Japan (besides pricing), it’s not really surprising, either.
Hopefully a “special price” is more than a small discount. I’d be happy to dump my UMDs in the mailbox for a digital code, but the idea of paying significantly for access to games I already own would probably keep most of those UMDs in a box until I move again.