Sony: simultaneous UMD and PSN releases still years away

Sony may finally be warming up to publishing PSP titles as PSN downloads, simultaneous releases with its UMD counterpart is still a long ways away – for North America at least.

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Sony may finally be warming up to publishing PSP titles as PSN downloads, simultaneous releases with its UMD counterpart is still a long ways away – for North America at least. Japan and Europe‘s a different story. Sony’s John Koller explains that

In North America we haven’t made a firm decision if and when we’re going to launch day and date, retail and digital. In Japan we do, and Europe’s going that way. In America we’re looking at the opportunity.

Digital kind of fits our view of the world in the mid-term, not in the short term – three to five years out. We want to start providing the content to the consumers and start to get them to a place where they can accept digital distribution.

I’m just wondering if the PSP will still be around that long. Koller also explains that a purely digital distribution model won’t happen anytime soon. Not sure why gamers would want to eliminate UMD distribution if they already have digital though.

Music hung on to the disc format for as long as possible, when consumers were actively saying ‘we’re very interested in digital. We’re very happy to provide that content and at least allow the consumer to make that choice. We want to provide the option to wake up in the morning and get it on-line or walk to the store and buy it.

We’re looking at various models to see when to launch those. That’s not to say retail is going away, because it’s not. It’s a balance, it’s a very fine balance because retail does so much for us that digital maybe can’t. So different models are floating around and we haven’t made a firm decision on that.