PSone games on PSP: $5.99 to $10.99

How do you actually play the games on the PSP, in other words, are the games transfered to the PSP memory card?

So, let me get this straight? I need a 600 dollar console in order to play PS1 games on my PSP? Well, my PSP is going to collect some more dust, I suppose.

Seriously, Sony finds new ways to totally mess things up.

I fail to see how 10.99 for a Playstation game is an incredible value compared to 10.00 for an N64 game. Although six bucks buys a Turbo Grafx game or a Playstation game... that's a bit better.

It may be a better value to buy the PS1 games, but you need a $600 system...

RIP OFF.

I picked up Colony Wars on eBay for 25 cents and It plays great on my PS2. Sure I can't take on a plane but you can't be the prices of used PS1 games.

WTF Sony. You are messing up a perfectly great idea.

Btw, how are you supposed to transfer the games onto the PS3? Are they going to be stored on the PSP's memory cards? Does the PS3 have to be on when playing those games on the PSP?

How is this a better value than the offerings of Nintendo or Microsoft? Please enlighten me.

*shakes head*

An excellent idea with some poor implementation. I have no plans to buy a ps3 till it builds up a decent game library and irons out the bugs which are always present in the first editions. That means i cannot get ps1 games for my psp? what twisted logic is that?

that said, teh pricing is decent. Highly successful titles like ff7 etc would probably be $10, while others would occupy the lower bracket. Its a better deal imho than nintendo's high price for even the crappiest legacy games.

Of course, ps1 games are still available quite easily, but it helps if you have a craving for an old hit and then find taht you can just download it and play it instead of going out hunting.

Having to buy a $600 PS3 and a $200 PSP to pay $.99 more($10.99) for PSOne titles as opposed to paying $250 for the Wii to pay $10 for N64 titles is a better deal?

$810.99 < $260?

I guess you could say "OH BUT YOU CAN TAKE THS PSONE GAMES PORTABLY!" To that I respond: why would you want to take a game that wasn't meant to be played in short, quick intervals and put it on a portable system?

Wasn't there an interview that stated you wouldn't need a PS3 for this?

Eventually you wont need a PS3. Just like eventually you will be able to play PSone (Downloadable)games on PS3 (Remember it can play them off disc, so the emulation is already there!). Just like eventually you'll be able to remotely connect to the PS3 anywhere in the world (Not just within youw home network). Allowing you to access your media anywherw without the need to fill up your mem stick.

All this stuff is quite exciting! Of course all the Wiitards among us will never appreciate anything Sony does.

Give Sony a break folks, they have had their fair share of crap, deservedly so, but when something good is in the pipeline, dont negate it! I think its great! And they actually have managed to do it, even if it is a bit bodged for now.

All they need are firmware updates for each system.

How exactly is $5.99 to $10.99 a better value then $5 (NES) to $10 (N64).

Becuase i'm pretty sure that $5 is less then $5.99 and $10 is less then $10.99.

Or am I screwing up my fangirl math?

"All this stuff is quite exciting! Of course all the Wiitards among us will never appreciate anything Sony does."

Oh come on there is nothing to be appreciated about requiring a $600 intermediary device to download PS1 games to an emulator that is, with the new firmware, *already* on my PSP. I have an intermediary device for downloading PS1 games to my PSP. It's called a Wi-Fi router. It was 50 bucks.

And look forward to being able to access all your music and media on your PS3 over the Internet from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. Apple did that with iTunes. You could listen to your own or someone else's playlists from across the planet. Then some morons cracked it so it became a pirate download service so Apple had to restrict it to local networks only. Great. Thank all you media-wants-to-be-free crackers.

Sony will release their global media sharing service. Some morons will crack it. You think DRM-happy Sony won't yank that feature right out of there faster than I can say, Gee you could have priced your console reasonably except you're trying to cram a Blu-Ray drive down my throat so you can establish a standard in HD DVD that, you know, you stand of a good chance of losing anyway. Did you know Sony has *never* established a strong worldwide media standard. Never. MiniDisc? MemoryStick? Betamax? Hybrid HD-DVD will kill Blu-Ray. Buy once, play everywhere; people will take any day that over being locked to Blu-Ray players.

I really would like to play Resistance: Fall of Man. I really would. But the PS3 is a mess, really it is.

I consider it retarded to dim the PS3 as "a $599.99 dollar console" since it costs $499.99. The 599,99 outsells the 499.99 because early adopters like value. But the 499,99 console isn't crippled in a way for you to say "shit, I have to get the premium console, the core is worthless". Sounds familiar?

Anyway, most PS1 games > most 64 games, that's why 64 lost the console race, and that's why PS1 titles are worth more than N64 titles. Hell, the most a 64 game measures is 40 Megabytes; the only PS1 games I can recall measuring that are Konami classics collection. lol.

The only titles worth owning would be Zelda and Mario 64. But most people already played those, so don't expect them to be "best sellers". Then again, nintendo fanboys like to buy the same things all over again (gameboy pocket, GBA SP, GBA Micro, DS lite, Gamecube Wii, Zelda Collection....). Would you at least ask them to refry the titles you download? i.e. better graphics for NES and SNES games, online play and a "gamerscore"? That way you aren't getting that screwed.

"Oh come on there is nothing to be appreciated about requiring a $600 intermediary device to download PS1 games to an emulator that is, with the new firmware, *already* on my PSP."

That's it jump on the bandwagon, it's so cool to slate Sony. Try researching before you post crap, the download direct to PSP service is coming before the end of the year. They've done the PS3 first as a thankyou to those who own a PS3 and PSP.


"I really would like to play Resistance: Fall of Man. I really would. But the PS3 is a mess, really it is."

The PS3 is not a mess. It plays games, it plays Blu Ray movies, you can download PSOne games for reasonable prices. The 360 launched with problems and over time they were sorted out, same will happen with the PS3.

I shouldn't have bloody bought a PSP. The games are all crap except for maybe a couple that are midly entertaining.
Lumines is the highest rated game. It's not even that good.

And now we need a a $600 PS3 to download PSone games?

"a little bit more than Japan's $4.50"
It's about a third more expensive. That's quite an increase, you couldn't find that kind of return easily at the bank or the stocks. I guess it's covering international duties on virtual goods?

Since some of you don't understand why $5 is not as good of a value as $5.99, I'll explain. Paying $5 for Zelda (NES) is not as good a value as paying $6 for a 400MB game that originally came on 2 CDs. There are bandwidth distribution costs and storage costs inherent in these services. Charging $5 for a game that's 20+ years old and costs pennies to distribute is definitely less value than paying $6 for a game that costs more to develop, costs more to distribute, and is much newer. Of course, it all comes down to what you want to buy (I've already bought Zelda and Mario 64, and doubt I'll be buying many PS games since I have most of the ones I want on disc already) but I'm not too blind to recognize the value proposition inherent in their price.

"But the PS3 is a mess, really it is."

And yet you don't give a single reason as to why you think that is. You're just yet another boring fanboy with nothing better to do than whine like a bitch because the direct to PSP downloads aren't quite ready yet.

"And yet you don't give a single reason as to why you think that is. You're just yet another boring fanboy with nothing better to do than whine like a bitch because the direct to PSP downloads aren't quite ready yet."

Excactly. The bulk of these people have nothing better to do than throw around baseless whining and bitching that usually go alot like this "I DONT OWN A PS3 BUT I SURE HATE IT!"

Seriously people STFU. If you dont have anything informative to say then stay quiet. Nobody cares how much you hate some company for no reason at all.

They are working on removing the PS3 from the equation, so in the future you will be able to download them straight to your PSP. So quit bitching, they are working on it.

Personally im more interested in playing classics on my future PS3 than a PSP. So im waiting for that to happen.

I gave no reasons? Um, how about the one about how you're not paying $600 for a games machine, or a games machine with media features, you're paying about $400 for a games machine and then contributing $200 more to Sony's campaign to the home video distribution industry to go with Blu-Ray, so they can say, See look at our installed base. I had a guy at Best Buy explain to me the other day that the PS3 was better because it has Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray can hold 50GB of data on a single dual-layer disc, meaning the games will look that much better. I've had people who should know better than this Best Buy sales guy explain it the same way. So, that's what, *maybe* 100MB of engine code and 49.9GB of character models and textures? Sure, I guess you can make longer games with Blu-Ray; that would represent a cost savings overall since you could spend $60 on one game with 35,040 game-play hours in the single player campaign. With PS3, you only really need one game, right?

Blu-Ray has a Byzantine data architecture that makes it somewhat difficult to develop for, which means longer development times, higher cost to develop, fewer quality games -- until the developers get up to speed, which will take them longer than with the other current generation consoles.

Sony did some things right, like including a larger hard drive, and Wi-Fi standard, not as an option. But what you basically have is a $600 Xbox 360 with the totally unproven and potentially Betamax-fated Blu-Ray drive; marginally better overall performance specifications, but a steep, steep learning curve. And when we are talking about versions of the same AAA titles, and that's most of the big games these days, for all current generation systems -- excepting Wii, which can't compete in graphics performance -- there is very little if any incentive for publishers to make the extra investment in taking advantage of PS3's specifications. One will look and play like the other. In fact, thre is much more incentive for developers to take advantage of Wii's special features in developing platform-specific versions.

I am absolutely sure I will buy a PS3. There will be PS3 games I want to play. But I will not buy one until any Sony stops expecting me to pay for their bid to establish the next home video distribution standard. In fact, if they'd decided to eat the cost of their own industry-standard campaign on Blu-Ray, I would have *pre-ordered* a PS3.

"They are working on removing the PS3 from the equation, so in the future you will be able to download them straight to your PSP. So quit bitching, they are working on it."

If they are taking much time "working on" direct-to-PSP PS1 emulation downloads, considering the emulator is now *already on* the PSP, considering they easily do their firmware updates over infrastructure Wi-Fi, then the Sony engineers are in more trouble than I thought. They can't be concerned about storage. This would only sell more proprietary format MemorySticks and since those aren't exactly an industry standard, you'd think they wouldn't mind selling several to every PSP owner. This is not an engineering problem; this is broken by marketing to promote the PS3. Which makes no sense, that you'd turn down PSP owners cash for games downloads that are by now almost pure profit just because they can't or won't buy a PS3. Hell, if they could even find one right now.

PS3's dependence on Blu-Ray is a problem. PS3's decentralized online multiplayer is a problem. PS3's lack of perceptible graphics/performance advantage over Xbox 360 is a problem. Sony has a great track record in games consoles. It's going to be hard to wear that away, but they're working on it: Trying to push UMD movies, playable *only* on your PSP, when they should have been begging developers for great portable-suited games for PSP; overly complicating PS3 and then making it a pain to get one while launching with some pretty lackluster titles; over-pricing the console against the competition; requiring PSP owners -- desperate for anything good to play on their portables -- to wedge a $600 impossible-to-find PS3 in between before they can download emulated content.

You'd think Sony's dominance is impenetrable, but there was another console maker who could never be pushed to last place. They were called Atari. There was another one; they were called Sega. There was another, called Nintendo. Give it some, some ongoing complications and missteps, and you'll have something like looks a lot like minidisc and sounds a lot like an 80s techno-pop song: Big in Japan.

"Um, how about the one about how you're not paying $600 for a games machine, or a games machine with media features, you're paying about $400 for a games machine and then contributing $200 more to Sony's campaign to the home video distribution industry to go with Blu-Ray, so they can say, See look at our installed base."

First of all why do you have to choose the 600$ PS3 to prove your point rather than the cheap version? Do you absolutly have to make the PS3 look as expensive as possible? There is a cheaper version you know. Also Blu-Ray is not Sonys product, yes they have had a hand in developing it but there are many many equal and lesser partners involved. If you have read up on the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray thing you would know that Microsoft was one of the main reason we have this stupid division at all. They refused to back a product that used a JAVA based menu system. Instead they back HD-DVD because it uses a Microsoft developed menu system.

"I had a guy at Best Buy explain to me the other day that the PS3 was better because it has Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray can hold 50GB of data on a single dual-layer disc, meaning the games will look that much better. I've had people who should know better than this Best Buy sales guy explain it the same way. So, that's what, *maybe* 100MB of engine code and 49.9GB of character models and textures? Sure, I guess you can make longer games with Blu-Ray; that would represent a cost savings overall since you could spend $60 on one game with 35,040 game-play hours in the single player campaign. With PS3, you only really need one game, right?"

No, wrong. I see that your problem with Blu-Ray is that you feel that it has no use for games. Well it does have a use, for example you now do not have to spread games over multiple DVDs. This also saves development time. Also I dont have to get up and change discs everytime I zone over to a new island or whatever. Its just a disc player with more space on it, it does not magically make graphics better or whatnot it just lets you put more on one disc. And IMHO that is a great thing.


"Blu-Ray has a Byzantine data architecture that makes it somewhat difficult to develop for, which means longer development times, higher cost to develop, fewer quality games -- until the developers get up to speed, which will take them longer than with the other current generation consoles."

I love how you use the word byzantine... Anyway I would love to see some documentation on how the data structure of Blu-Ray makes it hard to develop for.....

"This would only sell more proprietary format MemorySticks and since those aren't exactly an industry standard, you'd think they wouldn't mind selling several to every PSP owner. This is not an engineering problem; this is broken by marketing to promote the PS3. Which makes no sense, that you'd turn down PSP owners cash for games downloads that are by now almost pure profit just because they can't or won't buy a PS3. Hell, if they could even find one right now."

I do not disagree with you that marketing has some role in the delay of the straight to psp feature. But still it is coming. Also the memory stick is NOT a propietary product. This just shows your ignorance. There are other companies that produce Memory Sticks like for example SanDisk and Lexar.


"PS3's dependence on Blu-Ray is a problem. PS3's decentralized online multiplayer is a problem. PS3's lack of perceptible graphics/performance advantage over Xbox 360 is a problem."

How is the PS3 dependant of Blu-Ray? All PS3 games will be on BDs, what is the problem with that? So of the high capacity discs fail for popular movie distribution high capacity discs cant be used for games? You make no sence. How is the decentralized online a problem? Is it that it can offer a unsurpased(on consoles) 40 player online games? What are you talking about? And the lack of perceptible difference from 360 games? You should know that the GPUs are pretty much equal but the prosessor is superior so while you may not see much of a difference you can do more things on it like for example more characters on screen or better physics.


"You'd think Sony's dominance is impenetrable, but there was another console maker who could never be pushed to last place. They were called Atari. There was another one; they were called Sega. There was another, called Nintendo. Give it some, some ongoing complications and missteps, and you'll have something like looks a lot like minidisc and sounds a lot like an 80s techno-pop song: Big in Japan."

See this is where the real problem lies. You just WANT the PS3 to fail. For no reason, its got good hardware, good online and good games coming after launch. IMHO the good games start coming in March, like Motor storm, Mercenaries 2 and Heavenly Sword. So stop bitching and moaning for nothing. If you want good games right now buy a PS2 or a Wii. But when a console launches there are not too many good titles out. This is a "rule" for all launches. So please stop the ignorant and stupid hating. These console flaming wars give gamers a bad name and makes us look retarded. Its about games not which console you just happen to hate.

Fan, first of all Wii's launch titles aren't that much better than Sony's. There's greater diversity, but some of them are just gimmick tack-on type things.

Console titles have yet to regularly ship on multiple discs. So disc swapping is not an issue at this time. 4GB is a lot of game data. It suits the industry now and it will for some time to come. There's nothing inherently wrong with using BR as your game storage medium; but it's another thing entirely to make the game market pay through the nose for entirely ulterior motives.

The physics engines and 3D sprites-on-screen advantages of the Cell processor will only matter if and when developers can implement them; if and when they devote the time to learning to implement them. (Remember, too, the raw benchmarks between Cell and the other PowerPC architecture in the 360 are better; how programmable it is, that's another. Many Macs have been much stronger than comparable PCs but run games like hell.) And the GPU parity between systems *is* important. More and more, developers are dumping off processing tasks to the GPUs. If PS3 developers rely heavily on the GPU, and 360 developers likewise rely heavily on the GPU, you'll get perceptibly the same product.

I don't think HD-DVD (man, they have to come up with a better name for that format) is inherently better than BR. BR has some advantages that start to make up for that Byzantine data structure (what's the problem with the word "Byzantine"?). But it's more consumer-friendly. HD-DVD/DVD hybrid will kill BR, dead for sure. And there is apparently no way to partition BR as a hybrid because the laser technology is so different. Consumers like choices, and BR gives them only one.

40 players online in a single game session is an upper limit. 360 can do, what, 32. That's a spare difference. We'll have to see how they implement that. We'll have to see how many titles actually get online multiplayer in a decentralized service market in which the developer is entirely responsible for their own back-end, and back-ends are money pits.

As far as I know, MemoryStick *is* a proprietary format. It's licensed to 3rd party manufacturers.

If Sony could actually get PS3s out the door then tying PSP downloads to it as a marketing push to buy a PS3 might not be a bad idea. But the fact remains you can't get a PS3 if you want one. And by the time Sony is shipping PS3 in volume PSP owners are going to expect direct-to-PSP downloads.

Sony makes fabulous hardware. The PS3 is a marvel taken on its own, outside the bounds of a three-console market in which it has to compete. PSP is beautiful, elegant and just a pleasure to use. Bottomline, Sony designs and builds great consumer hardware. But Sony does not establish standards, Sony does not do services. Sony is trying to do everything with PS3 instead of concentrating on what they do best, building a great piece of hardware and letting the developers make the games that sell the system. Sony wants to be an integrator, but Microsoft is the company with years of experience in integration. I don't want Sony to fail. In fact I think a console market dominated Microsoft is a little scary. But even Merrill Lynch thinks 360 will own this generation by the end of its cycle.

Although I like the idea of downloadable PSone games on PSP, so far I'm not liking the implementation. Making it only available to PS3 owners is just lame (even if it is only temporary), and while $6.50 is an okayish price for PSone games, I think $11 would be too much.

It is, in fact, just like XBLA and the Virtual Console. I think everybody screwed up. I only have a few Arcade games on my 360, but if they dropped the price to $3.50-$7 for each game then I would buy a lot more. Five dollars for Joust is just ridiculous, and $10 for a PSone game is ridiculous too, especially since there is no added cost for burning the CDs, printing the manuals, buying cases, and of course eliminate the middle man--department stores--too. The only cost is bandwidth. The only reason they cost this much is because they figure we'll buy them.

I only have one "Classic NES" cartridge for my GBA, because they were just too damned expensive. Twenty dollars is far out of the realm of "impulse buy" and the only reason why I bought one at all was because it was on sale for $8. Even then I felt kinda ripped off. The same way I felt ripped off when I bought Joust on 360 for $5...

I think 5.99 is not too much at all. If they can sell me SOTN for that price and I can play it on my PSP, then I'm all for it. Seriously, when people moan and groan like this, this is why Nintendo has been the king in handhelds. No one can challange them because we shoot down any or handhelds or ideas. Loading the game to mem stick is fine. And for the person who complained about the proprietary memeory stick, there really is no standard in that market. Compact Flash, Memory Stick, and others are out there. Maybe if Nintendo were the company behind this everyone would be happy. Not everyone on this site is a fanboy, and all in all this is not a bad move Sony. Now just work on a PS3 and PSP price cut and its all good.

Who wants to play PS1 games anyway? They haven't aged well.

one work, fools: suhweet! :P

I thought the games on PSP were PS1 games. At least that's what they look like to me. Sony SUCKS!

yes yes... pray tell, how is Sony's digital distribution pricing structure a better value than the others?

Im a fan of the Residetn Evil series, and i really will like to get a PSP an play the games on the "GO", and im sure there is a lot of people that will like to play a lot of games from PSONE for the memories asocited with... but the current situation of the need of a PS3 ($600 +-) to get the games on the PSP (199.82 + 50) is a sword of two edges.

I can wait to the end of the year to see if finaly they offer a way to download the games direct to the PSP and get my PSP on a better price or I get tired of wait and nothing get done by SONY to work the market (you know the tipical "we are arrange in a future...") and I forget of the damm PSP.