According to Sony president of product planning Naoya Matsui, the company has been planning a UMD-less PSP since the launch of the original handheld system, but was simply waiting for the market for digital downloads to mature.
“We’d planned to release a PSP model without a UMD drive since the very beginning,” says Matsui, via Develop. “But if we’d simply released the hardware, there wouldn’t have been much for everyone to enjoy. We needed to prepare the right environment for it first - things like the transferral of content with the PS3 and PSN, and PC software to manage content like music and movies such as ‘Media Go’.
“We wanted to release it when the delivery of digital content was on par with the delivery of physical media. Thats what we’ve been working on these past two years. We’ll be selling the PSP Go alongside the existing PSP models, because it’s a product targeted at those people who are more accustomed to digital content.”
Sony officially launched the PSP Go at the E3 Expo event, and the handheld, besides removing the UMD drive, adds a slider design and and is slimmer than previous models.
Result for: psn
Sony America and NBC Universal have jointly announced a new deal that will bring NBCU movie and TV content to the PlayStation Network.
The content will be available for download via the PSN on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable consoles. The new addition brings PSN’s content total to 1300 movies and 4500 TV episodes.
Sony says there are 9 million registered PSN users in the US, and over 20 million worldwide.
There will be new releases available as well as catalog titles and NBCU specifically noted that hit shows such as “The Office“, “Heroes” and “Battlestar Galactica” would be available.
Prices vary on whether you want SD or HD-quality video.
Result for: psn
Sony has noted that their free PlayStation Network service has hit a new milestone, 20 million registered users.
The service went live with the launch of the PlayStation 3 in November 2006 and offers PS3 and PSP users access to demos, movies, wallpapers and other digital content as well as global multiplayer gaming.
Sony added that over 600 titles “now incorporate online play” and that PSN is available in 55 countries. There are also 14,500 digital items in the store with just under 6000 movies and TV episodes.
Over 380 million pieces of content have been downloaded through PSN since its launch, bringing in revenue of 180 million USD.
