Up to 7,000 PSOne-to-PSP titles by 2007, reports UK PSP Magazine

True, they are quoting the 7,000 figure as the complete ps1 backcatalog.

However, they mention several titles: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Final Fantasy VII, Silent Hill and Tomb Raider. We have already shown ridge racer, and we can assume first party games are already in the bag.

basically in a nutshell you have: [square, enix, EA], namco, eidos, and konami. If capcom jumps on board, and I'm sure they will... you have a majority of the major publishers for the ps1 backing this.

I understand the wii comparisons, but until they announce which third party companies are supporting the virtual console idea, we have less of an idea there.

What kind of media are these things coming on anyway! FF8 had 4 disks, there is no way to get that much junk onto a UMD or any memeory card unless it's that 4BG hard drive.

I'm really looking forward to this, And I'm sure that sony will somehow manage to come up with a combination of buttons to replace L2 and R2, and am I wrong, or is it true that some of the first PS1 games didn't even have one joystiq, let alone, two, so that could be substituted for the remaining buttons in some of the early games.

MosquitoControl, how does thanking the author make me biasd towards sony?

Bassbeast, this has been in developement since a little after the launch of the PSP, so I think its been in developement long before the announcement of the virtual console.

@#41
"Well Nintendo Portable Systems has a lot of remakes so why this is good for Nintendo but when Sony does something like this is bad?"

Because these arent 'remakes', they're the exact same game, just shrinked and some button configs changed. The upcoming FF3 for DS is a remake of the original, everything changed from 2D to 3D etc, but FFVII will still be FFVII, SOTN will still be SOTN, I highly doubt much will be changed besides the buttons and maybe an emu save option.

I love PS1 games FFVIII, SOTN, all that good stuff, but to me this is just pointless. Its a waste of technology and doesnt utilize what the PSP is truly capable of, and seems like a desperate attempt by Sony to make themselves look like they give a crap about what the gamer things in the aftermath of the PS3 crap and the PSP disabling.

You homebrewers dont plan on jumping on this train anytime soon either. Im sure with each game download, your firmware will be promptly upgraded before you can play anything, but Im sure a work around will be discovered as always.

Jedediah Johnson, the console costs $200, and yes, it is pretty neat when 7,000 classic title come to a portable, I mean, I'm sure you were probably jumping up and down when you heard mario cart was coming to the NDS, and that is just one game, not 7,000.

Im almost willing to bet i will be able to play the original gran turismo before the gran turismo mobil UMD is release.

To this day, I still play GT1. After i beat the latest GT i always go back to the original. I think its still the best. And if the emulation allows for online/network play... even better.

otherwise i cant think of any other game id rather play on psp ps1 emulator. maybe kagero...

Well, while the idea of a sleep mode is fine on the PSP, I recall mine never lasting all that long. Not long enough to hold through a full 8-9 hour work day. This means you'll have to drag the charger with you to and from work, leave it on the desk, and watch it magically vanish when you come back from the toilet.

Also, one of the main reasons why the NES retro games sold well is because they are truly retro. NES was 80's, not that many people actually owned one. Compare that to the PSOne, that sold over 100 million units, and claims to be in 1/3 of US houseolds, or nearly 150+ million people with one in their house, with even more when factoring in the PS2's built in backwards compatibility. There just aren't the huge numbers of people that missed out on the PSOne generation, but there are a huge number that missed out on the NES generation as many of those NES owners never continued on playing games (as indicated by the significant drop in sales numbers from NES to SNES) past that point and to this day are likely not playing still.

Tons of people missed out on playing Double Dragon, Battletoads, and River City Ransom. Hardly anyone missed out on playing Final Fantasy anything.

Fact is, dumping out old games that aren't old enough to be considered retro is no substitute for not creating new content. Also doesn't help that you're hard pressed to find someone who didn't play Final Fantasy 7 that has any desire to.

There are huge questions to be answered by Sony on this.

Pricing: Other than some collector's items, many of which are receiving PSP remakes [Valkyrie Profile, Suikoden], how are these going to valued by Sony and the other publishers involved? $5-$10? For a small investment, compared to their average original title, Square could produce remakes of the PS1 FF games that would do far more business as UMDs. Would they want to have both the originals and the remakes being marketed to the PSP audience?

It seems like most of the PS1 games worth buying for use under emulation would be better values as remakes with lower retail prices than original new PSP releases. The prospect of an updated Jumping Flash collection for $30 or less is more enticing than buying the PS1 versions again unless they're extremely low priced.

Behavior: These aren't tiny little cartridge games that have already been heavily compressed. These are CD games where there was disc capacity to burn and the sole capacity issue was the PS1 RAM space. What will be done to mitigate the tendency of PS1 games to operate in a fashion contrary to the needs of the PSP?

For instance, most PS1 games used Red Book (plain cD audio) tracks for their music and sequential audio needs. This worked fine since there was very little processing overhead and disc space was far greater than most games could ever use. This is bad news for PSP use for two main reasons. First, this means the game will be constantly spinning the UMD for streaming audio, resulting in battery life as bad or worse than when playing UMD movies. (Potentially worse because there will be more chipset activity for the emulator and the game's high level of interactivity than there is for movie playback.) Second, this means far bulkier files to download and store on Memory Stick. A PS1 game with little or no FMV that used 400 MB of disc space could be 90% Red Book audio data.

Having the file compressed and decompressed on the fly by the emulator is possible but that still leaves the issue of terrible battery life, even by PSP standards. The normal approach for a native PSP game is to load a compressed audio file into RAM and decompress it in real-time as it is played for background music. The processing overhead and power consumed is minor compared to the penalty for constantly running the UMD drive.

With some work the emulator could be made to trap calls to stream audio from the CD and substitute compressed (as downloaded) versions. This means a certain amount of additional smarts in the emulator and a certain amount of added work for each game. The same could be applied to FMV sequences. 100 MB of the old Motion-JPEG format would easily become a small fraction of that in MPEG-4. If the original animation files are available they could look far better than the PS1 originals while taking up much less space.

But again, this means some added work beyond just testing a game under the emulator.

Then we have a few dozen games that took up multiple CDs on the PS1. A small portion of the entire library but including some of the most valued titles. The three FF games, Star Ocean 2, etc. These would be the most unwieldy download but they also have the most potential for being reduced in bulk.

In addition to the aforementioned audio and FMV issues, the big RPGs tend to have a lot of duplication between discs. Take away the FMV bits and FF7 doesn't go much over a single disc. But since those FMV clips are only used once a piece in the story, if you have all of the code and AV assets on the second disc, you need never boot fromt he first disc for the rest of the game. The same follows for the third discs and so on.

If the great reduction in bulk for the audio and FMV is accomplished, then all of that duplication can be avoided. You just need to tweak the source code (or scripted traps to a shell under the emulator but higher than the host file) so that it thinks it's running from a single disc. After all the tweaks are complete, an FF7 with much improved FMV (albeit of the same awful source animation for historical accuracy) could be made into a download of under 500 MB. Possibly far smaller depending on how many of those big audio tracks were duplicated on the four CDs.

But after all of that work to make it into a viable download, why not go a bit farther and make it into a full remake worthy of being sold at retail on UMD? The PSP could double the polygon rendering rate for these games with barely any effort and Square has all the data at hand for substitute models to take advantage of that. It would make the game look immensely better with nowhere near the work required for a full remake.

Even after tweaks to reduce the size of the download, a lot of these will still be hundreds of megabytes. Rough going for a commercial service in a market where many still lack broadband or have minimal broadband speeds. Might there be automated kiosks in retail outlets that will connect to your PSP or take in your Memory Stick for a quick transfer from an embedded PC? The PSP with Memory Stick may be required since the downloads might be tied directly to that PSP via its unique identifiers such as MAC address.

You can find a sample license agreement at the link below or many other places. The fact that they are giving consumers the option to purchase the games is additive and shouldn't be looked at negatively. I'm sure some games will work better than others.

http://contracts.onecle.com/acclaim/sony.lic.1994.12.14.shtml

From a Playstation Licensee Agreement....Note the fact that Sony has the right to designate the format but limits the Licensee (developer)...Therefore, they don't have to ask developers to distribute electronically.

4.2 Reservation of Sony's Rights. The licenses granted in this License Agreement extend only to development of Licensed Products for use on the Player, in such format as may be designated by Sony. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, Licensee shall not have the right to distribute or transmit the Executable Software or the Licensed Products (to the extent such Executable Software or the Licensed Products include Sony Materials) via electronic means or any other means now known or hereafter devised, including without limitation, via wireless, cable, fiber optic means, telephone lines, microwave and/or radio waves, or over a network of interconnected computers or other devices. This License Agreement does not grant any right or license, under any Intellectual Property Rights of Sony or otherwise, except as expressly provided herein, and no other right or license is to be implied by or inferred from any provision of this License Agreement or the conduct of the parties hereunder. Licensee shall not make use of any of the Sony Materials and Player or any Intellectual Property Rights related to the Sony Materials and Player (or any portion thereof) except as authorized by and in compliance with the provisions of this License Agreement or as may be otherwise expressly authorized in writing by Sony. No right, license or privilege has been granted to Licensee hereunder concerning the development of any collateral product or other use or purpose of any kind whatsoever which displays or depicts any of the Licensed Trademarks.

a good line up, but it's a pity the PSP feels like crap to play. Hense selling on mine and buying a DS Lite. Nah. Not even this can save the PSP, it will help PS3 likely, especially if games are expected to cost so much. I suppose we'll see.

and if its possible for EVERY PS1 game to hit the PSP and co, then god forbid someone tallies up the numbers for the NES, Snes, N64, Mega Drive, TurboGraf-whatever and Gamecube. Hmmm.

Varian you are a freaking idiot.

"Nostalgia is fueling people's perspective on this now."

What do you think Nintendo has been using for the past 20 years?! All they do is come out with Mario this and that. Mario has appeared in OVER 100 GAMES!!! PURE NOSTALGIA!

You're bashing something that allows gamers to play all their old favorites on handheld! Let me guess, just because tetris is old it's not good anymore? Horrible minority argument.

PS. Nobody cares about older games, that's why the PSP can currently emulate just about every console out there except for last generation on the psp already. Yeah, nobody would want those.

a lot of people care about older games. I would get a psp if the emulation worked well, and this is coming from a diehard nintendo fanboy

Are people really complaining about PS1 downloadable games on the PSP? What is there to complain about? PSP owners are getting the option of more content - whether they choose to play it or not is up to them - but you cannot argue that having the option is a bad thing, can you?

How many people still downgrage their PSP firmware to play retro titles? How well do games like Capcom Classics, Midway Arcade and Namco Museum sell? There is obviously a market there.

If the PSP cannot support the control scheme, then don't port the game over. Pretty simple. If they do port it over and you see reviews of shoddy controls, then don't buy it. Still simple.

7,000 games? 2,000 games? 500 games? 50 games? Who cares what the number is. If they don't deliver 7,000 are you really going to be pissed off because you were actually intending on purchasing/downloading all 7,000 of them? More games = more options and as a PSP owner, I am happy about that - no matter the number.

If I took a look back at the PS1 catalog, I will likely only be interested in playing 20 or so titles ever again anyway. If the publishing community serves up some of those key titles for me, then thanks! That's awesome! I'll take it! Give me Intelligent Qube, Devil Dice, Mr. Driller, the Oddworld series, the Metal Gear series, the FF series, FF Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Puzzle Fighter, Parappa the Rapper, Crash Team Racing, Bust A Groove, Chrono Cross, SOTN, etc., etc. and I am a happy, happy man.

My second post was in pure sarcasm...

As a person who wasn't around for the PS1 generation and who owns a PSP, I am very excited about this. It can be hard to find PS1 games. Even on eBay, some titles go for $100+. If I can go back and play some of the classics I've missed, then I can't wait.

c'mon people, Ridge Racer!

Finally, a reason to buy a PSP again after some degenerate jerk off still stuck in the 3rd century stole mine, instead of buying one himself. Or just stealing the guys across the street.

I hope they will have some of the less popular but awesome games like Skullmonkeys and Fear Effect.
But how the hell are the games going to work when there is no L2 and R2 buttons?
They could replace the d-pad input with the nub, then use left and right on the d-pad for L2 and R2, but that would suck for moving and holding a button. Are they just going to redo the control setups for each game?

...Forgot to mention 'Tomba!' I'm sure people would love to play that game on PSP.

" Jedediah Johnson, the console costs $200, and yes, it is pretty neat when 7,000 classic title come to a portable, I mean, I'm sure you were probably jumping up and down when you heard mario cart was coming to the NDS, and that is just one game, not 7,000."

There is no way the entire ps1 library will be supported by this emulator. Not only will it be a pain to obtain the licences for the majority of ps1 titles, the emulator will not work in the same way as one of the better snes or nes emulators(or Nintendo's virtual console). In order to get any ps1 game(besides the most basic) to run through software emulation on the psp's limited hardware sony will most likely have to make a "patch fix" for each game. Whoever ends up paying to create this fix will only do so if they are 100% it will make them some money, so we'll be lucky if there are 100 games available on through this service.

Also, besides the few people who missed out completly on the ps1 who will buy the system just for the emulator? If you haven't bought a psp yet it's probably because you either don't have the money or have yet to see an interesting game released on the psp(my case). Ps1 emulation would be nice, but I don't see it having much of an effect on sales until someone starts putting out quality psp titles.

A lot of this announcement needs to be qualified for real-world aspects. There may have been around 7,000 PS1 software SKUs globally but a fraction of that for any major market. Japan got a lot of games that never saw release here and vice versa. Plus a smaller number that sold in Europe and nowhere else.

Using http://gamedude.com/sonypsx.html as a reference and eliminating some redundancies (such as bundles with GunCon and without), the US PS1 SKU list comes to approximately 1300 games. Japan's list is far longer but has a greater level of redundancies with a zillion special editions of the same game, like ten differents versions of the same puzzle game each with different anime series characters. A major portion of those Japanese games that have any appeal to the US market need substantial translation work. Since many of those already have remakes on the PSP in Japan, it makes far more sense to localize those native PSP versions than do a localization job for a game selling cheap under emulation.

Of those 1300 games there are numerous sports entries with only minor differences. How many of the 9 PS1 Madden Football entries do we need for emulation on top of the native PSP versions? Add to that 8 NBA Live, 8 NBA Shootout, 10 NFL Gameday, and 4 each of NCAA Final Four, NCAA Football, NCAA Gamebreaker, and NCAA March Madness. (And a partridge in a pear tree...) Eliminating redundant sports titles and picking just the best from each series probably knocks a good 100 entries off the list.

Then there are games that are reliant on special controllers to be of any worth. Dance pads, light guns, fishing rods, etc. That likely accounts for 50 more PS1 games we need not concern ourselves with on the PSP.

Games with extensive controller requirement that cannot be acceptably mitigated by the emulator. Who knows but probably at least another 50. (Ape escape already has a native PSP version, so thats a tossup.)

Games that already have native PSP versions now or on the way. Ape Escape, Medievil, Valkyrie Profile, Suikoden, Breath of Fire III, many others.

Realistically, we're looking at just a few hundred titles that would be suitable for this form of distribution.

Licensing should not be a problem. While Sony cannot simply appropriate other companies' IP for publication, it is highly unlikely any of the companies involved are going to turn down the chance to derive new revenue from old PS1 games in exchange for nearly no work on their part. Contractual agreements will have to be reached but that is a mere formality. Some companies may choose not to have their products involved due to conflicting plans. If Capcom wants to release a PSP version of the 'MegaMan X Collection' it probably doesn't want to also have the individual PS1 MegaMan X titles sold by download and diluting the market for the collection. OTOH, if the download cumulatively would cost more than the collection on UMD, it's less of a problem.

Some could view it as a way to test interest for a remake. If Suikoden under emulation gets a good response, Konami may then see fit to release a localized US version of the existing PSP version.

Like I was saying, this is all well and good but the thing that makes nintendo portables great with retro releases is that there is always a better library already in place. that Library in addition to the retro releases is what made the GB and the GBA-SP overall library shine. PSP has a very limited library. Emulation for PS1 games is a clear attempt to try and gain interest for the PSP as a gaming portable without actually releasing new games for it. It's desperate on Sony's part.

Trying to reconfigure the D-pad to take advantage of the L2 and R2 buttons is retarded. If a game requires you to use the L2 button and the analog nub at the same time, you're screwed. Try it on a PSP now and tell me its possible. You need a third hand to pull that off. Also, many old PS1 games used the D-pad...do I really need to go there in regards to the PSP's Dpad. When third party developers are making replacement d-pads for the PSP, that's an indication that the standard d-pad is ass.

Sony needs to concentrate on exclusive A+ content on PSP as a GAMING portable. Otherwise, we're going to be hearing alot of comments like, "PSP coulda, shoulda, woulda, but didn't."

It amazes me how negative some of you are being in regards to downloadable PlayStation games. I fully understand the complications of the situation, not to mention the track record of Sony amidst the next generation, but I fail to see how having a plentiful amount of classics available for download could be a bad thing.

People also seem to forget the masses of quality titles that were so rare we simply could not get our hands on them, or those that we never got the first time around. This will prove to be a fantastic opportunity to get them, indeed! It just seems that some of you are so quick to turn down the whole idea simply because it's Sony who are behind it. I ask you to do this: Imagine a handheld console where you can download a library of fantastic titles. Despite complications it doesn't sound so bad, does it? Of course not.

Dang, and I just sold my PSP to get a DS Lite...

I have no regrets!

Why do I have the feeling all PSone games that got PSP remakes aren't going to be on it? But that is understandable. Which means no Valkryie Profile or Medievil. Maybe Suikoden 1 + 2 cause Japan got a double pack of that.

This is sweet. One more reason to get a PSP for me.

Current reasons:
1. Metal Gear (Ac!d, Ac!d 2, Portable Ops)
2. Me and my Katamari
3. Silent Hill Origins
4. Tales of Enternia
5. Valkryie Profile
6. Daxter
7. Ratchet and Clank Size Matters
8. This

I love Nintendo, I love my DS, and I didn't have a PSP for very long, but...

...I think this announcement just solidified my decision to repurchase one. There were a few games coming out for it soon (Crisis Core, Silent Hill: Origins, RocoLoco) that I really wanted to play, but they weren't enough to get me to slap down another $200 to get back into the game. THIS, though... this just did it.

Good job, Sony. I may not care for your tactics or your arrogance in marketing, but you've just sold another PSP. Gotta love the games.

Lest anyone misinterpret my previous posts, I think this is a very positive move on Sony's part. I just find great fascination in analyzing the logistics of the effort. Plus it always helps to keep thingws grounded rather than let Sony's hype confuse people when the truth would have done as good a job of selling the concept.

This is not desperation on Sony's part. It is an entirely rational use of existing assets to make a current platform stronger.

A few more considerations:
If Sony is able to implement modern codec for the previously uncompressed audio and FMV, games that previously occupied an entire CD could get down well under 100 MB. So a fair number of them would fit on a single 1 GB Memory Stick that will be retailing for as little as $20 by this point next year.

Still, people will want to have a larger library without spending a lot on Memory Sticks, so the question arises whether we'll be permitted to store the files on our PCs and put them on the PSP as desired. If the file is encoded to work with only one PSP (via MAC address or internal serial number) this becomes a stronger possibility.

For an example of how much smaller a PS1 game can become by application of modern codecs, look at Resident Evil 2 on the N64. Regarded as superior to the PS1 version but resides on a mere 64 megabyte (512 megabit) cartridge.

Some people I've spoken to don't get how much space audio files took up on PS1 game discs. You can do this experiment for yourself. Take a music CD and note the total play time and how much room this amount of uncompressed audio occupies on the CD. I'll use as my example Frank Zappa's 'Apostrophe/Overnight Sensation' which comes in at 1:06:20 or approximately 583 MB as data. A lot of music for a single PS1 game.

Compressing this to WMA in high quality 192k (the PSP uses a similar in performance codec) results in the same audio only occupy 91.8 MB of space. We could squeeze that down a fair bit more before any quality loss would be noticed by most people.

Since audio tracks for background music consumed by far the most disc space on games that weren't heavy users of FMV, if Sony can succeed in substituting compressed audio when PS1 games are emulated on the PSP, it will make a huge difference for downloading and storing these items.

Although there are few differences, this is far simpler than emulating the Xbox on the Xbox 360. The PS1 and PSP are both based on the MIPS instruction set architecture (ISA) with the differences being very minor compared to getting x86 code running at full speed on a PowerPC system.

Even so, Sony may use some of the same techniques as Microsoft for emulator performance and convenience. If they're going to tweak the games to use compressed audio and better video codecs, they might as well also do preprocessing at their end to produce files that run more quickly on the PSP. The lower the processing overhead the less drain on the battery. So long as it can be automated and doesn't require Sony engineers to go wading through the source code, it's worth doing.

The emulator would also likely be built into each file rather than a single application from which you then pick a PS1 game from those on the Memory Stick. The emulator would only be a megabyte at most and having it built-in means each file stands on its own and runs directly from the PSP interface.

I like the double standard. Wii downloading old games is awesome...psp downloading old games is crap? Personally I like the idea if for nothing else but to stave off the ports of the psone games. Plus it means I can get games like bushido blade and rival schools on the go (hopefully anyway).

Also to all those that wonder how you can play alot of these games in the get-up-and-go style. It may interest y'all to know that you simply pause and put the psp in standby mode and it can stay like that for days without charging down. Then when you want to play the game again you turn on the psp and it's ready to go where you left it. I use it all the time, way better than a save spot ^_^.

FFVII for PSP? It almost makes me want to get one.

Great! Hopefully they can live up to the hype.

Sleep mode is a lifesaver, the small low-res screen will make the games look better and there are so many more PS1 games that I missed when it was freshly released.

Sony is definitely on to something, but how long will they offer this service?

this is great news. I don't see the point why people would even try to make this out to be another Nin vs. Sony flame war. I don't really care if they only have 10 games ready when this thing flies. Cause with just the few games they did announce...... I'll be a happy camper.

3 > 2
SOTN > you

theres a nice mathematical poem for you
that's all i have to say.

I cant wait to have Final Fantasy VII on the go, I absolutely love this game but my commute to work is an 1 hr and 20 mins so I've never got around to playing this game over again. As soon as I can emulate it... I will.

Hopefully someone will find out some file sizes soon!