There are only a few weeks left until the Playstation Vita officially launches in the U.S. and Sony is finally giving us an answer about the UMD Passport program in that region. Unfortunately the answer is not what most of us in the U.S. were hoping to hear.
A Sony representative confirmed to Kotaku today that the UMD Passport program will not be offered at all in the United States. The UMD Passport service would allow PSP owners to register their UMD games and get a discount on the downloadable version of those same games. This allows PSP owners to at least get some value out of their existing system and games when, or if, they upgrade to the Vita.
It seems that if you live in the U.S. and want to play your PSP games you have two choices. You can either keep your PSP and the associated UMD games or you can rebuy all of your games, at full price, on the online store and play them on the Vita.
Sony has yet to comment on why it chose not to bring the UMD Passport program stateside.
I'm personally still on board with the handheld. I had far too many UMD based PSP games to make any sort of program like UMD Passport worth it for me. Even with a discount I would still be looking at a significant outlay of funds to get all of my games in digital form on the new console.
Were any of you folks planning to buy a Vita? Does this change your mind? Let us know how you feel about Sony's decision in the comments.
