Details on Dumping Your Soon Useless UMDs Soon

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.

My 3DS can play DS games.
 
Unfortunately that's mostly what my 3DS plays....
 
At least they are giving you the option if there are any PSP games that you are still attached to.

honestly id rather just pay full price then bother with any of that

So what you're saying is UMD-based games will be on sale soon...

I'm kind of tempted to just keep my PSP and play that. I have a hard time believing all UMDs will be available for digital download anyway.

@wolf_blitzer85 said:

My 3DS can play DS games. Unfortunately that's mostly what my 3DS plays.... If anything, if you are still super attached to older PSP games, at least you have an option to bring it to the Vita.

Ain't that the truth! Hell I play more NES Legend of Zelda they gave me for free than any 3DS game.

@WJist: yeah I have games like b-boy and x-men legends 2 that were never released digitally are they gonna release every game?

As long as the "special price" is "zero monies" I think this is a great idea.

Well fuck, I already traded all my UMD's in when I got a Go. 

Cause you know, UMD's right?

@Enigma777 said:

Well fuck, I already traded all my UMD's in when I got a Go.

So you're already one step ahead of everyone with UMD's!

@Hizang: How else am I going to watch Van Helsing on a plane?

Does that mean that the entire PSP library will appear on the Vita? Or just certain ones? This is something I'd really love to hear details on, so it sucks that it's just kind of an idea right now.

@wolf_blitzer85 said:

My 3DS can play DS games. Unfortunately that's mostly what my 3DS plays.... At least they are giving you the option if there are any PSP games that you are still attached to.

The difference with the 3ds and psp and vita is that the Vita will just flat out not play the UMD's while the 3ds can still play older games from previous versions.

This "Special price" Better be the S/H cost to send them in and get a DLC code as having to pay money to play games I already own on a newer system is not gonna work. I still own my psp 1000 from Launch day and it works fine for the few things I have for it (Persona, persona 2, crysis core, monster hunter) I want the vita but if it means my psp is turning into my gba while the vita is the DS and it wont let me move my games over, i dont think I am to interested anymore.

If you've ever bought a UMD then you are just Sony's bitch. Sony is always trying to control markets with their own priority format, like the memory sticks. That is why I will never buy a sony product.

@Brackynews: You just made me regret selling my PSP!

Of course it'll be at a price.

Please Sony don't screw this up.

Isn't this the exact sort of thing that "Proofs of Purchase" were designed for? I highly doubt that Sony wants a few hundred thousand UMDs being sent back to them to be processed and recycled or buried in a landfill and crushed ET-style, and I don't really want to give up my physical copies (the UMDs themselves).

So wouldn't it make more sense to have everyone cut out their Proofs of Purchase and mail them in and have the games toggled for their PSN account? I realize this is waaaaaay too hopeful for Sony, but it's my dream world and I can dream what I want. ;_; It could be a problem for anyone that bought a copy of a game used without its PoP, but that's the peril of buying used. (I also realize this is open to fraud via counterfeit PoP's, but I think the average user wouldn't go through the effort.)

@zanshin said:

If you've ever bought a UMD then you are just Sony's bitch. Sony is always trying to control markets with their own priority format, like the memory sticks. That is why I will never buy a sony product.

So you don't own a any Nintendo products except a Wii, huh? And won't buy a Wii U? Those are all proprietary formats. I get all of the proprietary format rage, especially when it comes to memory cards, but on consoles/portables for distribution format, I really have a hard time arguing against them. PS1/PS2 had a proprietary memory card, as did the original Xbox and the 360 (though you can now use USB storage on the 360).

(That said: Really Sony, it's time for SD cards. Man up, already.)

The original FAQ post from Playstation also says that the Vita can play all PSP downloadable titles from PSN, so at least it's got that going for it out of the gate.

Just my opinion, but when Japanese companies say, "we're evaluating the possibility of [insert service]", it's pretty much equivalent to a parent saying to their child, "ma~~ybe."

i started buying digital psp games i dont own last week for the vita and i noticed there is no metal gear acid 1 or 2 and no xmen legends 2, so if they dont do somthing with these umds i will be fairly annoyed

@Enigma777 said:

Well fuck, I already traded all my UMD's in when I got a Go.

Then I guess you just need to redownload all the games into your vita!

I love my plastic too much to pay a company to take it from me then offer me a download code in return. I would much sooner re-buy.

Not counting on this program being available in North America, but it would be nice, even if the digital library isn't at 100% of the UMD library. (Some of Square's games, like Birth by Sleep, were never released on PSN, only available on UMD.)

@Binman88 said:

Mandatory bullshit first post.

I like chicken.

Great.

Every start of a new generation of hardware weird people want their new piece of tech to run old games. 2 years go by and nobody gives a shit anymore.

If playing old games is really keeping you from buying something, what are you doing? Stop it.

@Alex_Carrillo said:

Every start of a new generation of hardware weird people want their new piece of tech to run old games. 2 years go by and nobody gives a shit anymore.

If playing old games is really keeping you from buying something, what are you doing? Stop it.

Its because at the start of every generation there is nothing to play on the new hardware. Not such a big deal with handhelds save for those who want to trade in their old ones, but with consoles taking up entertainment center space it is. Its in teh hardware makers interest to allow them to be backward compatible.

I've got 23 UMDs that I'm NOT paying for again. Do it right if you do it at all, Sony.

If it's not 5 dollars per game, not interested

A legit way to get Metal Gear Ac!d 1 and 2 and Lumines 1 and 2 on there is a good offering. I'll be watching this for sure.

@endaround said:

@Alex_Carrillo said:

Every start of a new generation of hardware weird people want their new piece of tech to run old games. 2 years go by and nobody gives a shit anymore.

If playing old games is really keeping you from buying something, what are you doing? Stop it.

Its because at the start of every generation there is nothing to play on the new hardware. Not such a big deal with handhelds save for those who want to trade in their old ones, but with consoles taking up entertainment center space it is. Its in teh hardware makers interest to allow them to be backward compatible.

I can understand consoles, but for handhelds...man, just keep it. I haven't kept everything, but I still have my Gameboy advance to play all the way back to the earliest Gameboy games if I want.

A few bucks for processing is fine with me, but I won't bite if they are simply trying to cash in. Anything over ~5 dollars and I'm out.

@lord_canti said:

i started buying digital psp games i dont own last week for the vita and i noticed there is no metal gear acid 1 or 2 and no xmen legends 2, so if they dont do somthing with these umds i will be fairly annoyed

The best way to get those games onto your PSP digitally is to put on a CFW then rip the games.

Since I have only had one handheld in my life, a GBA SP, this doesn't affect me. It only slightly bothers me by principle, but hey, what did you expect? No one gave us discounts to upgrade our DVD's to Blu-ray.

"Sony will allow owners of UMD games to gain access to digital versions at a special price."

Um, no... it's either you give me the games that I already paid for free as incentive to buy your hardware or I just skip your hardware and by extension future software.

For fucks sake, I'm like, that one guy out there who buys PSP games and doesn't pirate, and I continue to feel like I'm being punished for it.

If this "special price" was a dollar or something, it wouldn't be too bad. But it won't be.

The only UMD game I would care about enough to get a digital copy of, because my psp's disc drive broke, is one of the few UMD games who's publisher said outright that they wouldn't release a digital version...ever...at this point I would rather buy a new psp then a Vita...

Fuck it, I'll just keep my PSP.

Hope I'm not the only one who read UMD as "use magical device" :/. Damn you DDO!

are they making a digital version of Crisis Core finally?  if not then I have to keep that UMD :(

I would love to own that UMD Hellraiser!

So...sony already said in an interview during this past e3 that they'd be announcing how you could download your old umd games for free. Now, its just a discounted price? Though, this discounted price is currently only announced in japan. I doubt sony of america will do ANYTHING, except sell psp games on the store. They also said the psp go would have a way to transfer umds to it, and that never happened.

So...finished with your psp games? Sell em on amazon, ebay, or wherever.

Alright so does that mean crisis core and kingdom hearts will appear on the store?

Whatever, if I can have the whole Persona series on my Vita I'll gladly pay for them again.

They could make this work well if the price was for a bulk of UMDs at once.

So like, a $10 processing fee would allow for up to 50 UMDs to be converted at once.

Dedicated PSPers would love that, and it would create a huge demand for UMDs from people about to switch, which would empty the market in preparation for the Vita.

I plan on keeping my PSP and UMD's, so this doesn't have any effect on me.

@Enigma777 said:

Well fuck, I already traded all my UMD's in when I got a Go.

You're probably the winner here, this deal most likely won't be as sweet as dumping them when there was still a market for them.

Or, I could just keep my PSP and play the UMDs on there. Why would I want them digitally? So they could take up all the space on my Vita? That doesn't make any sense. Do people own UMDs that don't own PSPs? All I have are questions!

This is insanely stupid given that almost anyone nerdy enough to have one of these things almost certainly has an iPhone or Android that they can play movies on. And Apple, Amazon, and others have much larger collections than the handful of movies available from the Sony Media Go store or whatever its called these days. And with Sony having legal problems and security problems nearly every week you would have to be a fool to give them any money.

I have a couple of UMDS that i still want to play so this is quite nice.