Sony's UMD Passport system which allows PSP games to be played on the PS Vita officially starts today in Japan with both good and bad news regarding the service.
The good news is the service does have PSP games and covers most of the smaller companies who helped keep the system healthy in Japan such as Atlus, Nippon Ichi, Acquire, Kaga Create, Alchemist, Tecmo Koei, and SNK.
The bad news is none of the actual big publishers who were directly responsible for keeping the system alive in both hardware sales and software sales have any of their games available for the program at the moment. This includes companies such as Capcom, Konami, Sega, Namco Bandai, and Square Enix who were the main providers for the PSP. Sony vaguely mentions those studios will eventually supply their games to the Passport system but gave no guarantees on the bigger games being available nor any dates on when those games would arrive.
More bad news for the service is while there are about 262 games available at launch from the total Japanese PSP library, this amount is only 1/3 of the overall PSP titles available (606 games) with the bigger games found only on the PSN Store but at their regular prices. Sony confirms as of now the Passport system is only available in Japan with no details on if or when the service would arrive in other regions even though Japan was the only hotbed for the handheld in comparison to the Nintendo DS.
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To take advantage of UMD Passport, users must download a “UMD Passport” application to their PSP, insert a compatible UMD, and Sony somehow verifies that UMD (the exact process isn't known). Once that’s done, you gain access to a digital version--for a cost, anyway.
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Also revealed was the reason for the wide ranges in prices for the UMD Passport system is due to Sony refusing to apply a standard in prices to cover the cost of bandwidth to host the games on PSN and allowed publishers to determine the prices for the games. Sony themselves felt certain games were more valuable than others and used the "conversion" excuse to why certain games (mostly Sony and bigger titles) had higher prices.
http://www.screwattack.com/news/umd-...publishers-mia
http://www.giantbomb.com/news/you-sh...-program/3828/
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Daily Recap:
1) Ed Boon hints if Sony's rumored Smash Bros game is really in development, his studio wouldn't mind lending Scorpion or other MK characters as 3rd party fighters for the game.
http://www.examiner.com/video-game-n...nstinct-rumors
2) The next game in the "Army of Two" series is rumored to be called "Army of Four" and would have 4-player co-op along with using the Frostbite 2.0 engine to power the game.
http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/...-army-of-four/
3) Nintendo announces the 10 free GameBoy Advance games for 3DS users in the Ambassador Program will arrive before the end of December with an official date to be announced once the final 5 unannounced games and the updates for the GBA games are ready.
http://www.screwattack.com/news/3ds-...ll-coming-year