As you might have read, the US will notĀ receiveĀ a UMD passport program like Japan.
This is enough to frustrate quite a few people, but Shuhei Yoshida believes Sony’s making the right decision and that consumers should understand exactly why it is that digital copies will not be offered.
“You can buy Final Fantasy Tactics for $10. That’s a great price. There are many, many games that are sold at an affordable price. Because people in Japan are not getting the digital copy for free, because it costs us money to develop and maintain the system so we are asking people to pay somewhere between $5 and $10 to receive the digital copy in addition to what they have on the UMD. When you compare that to the price of games here, PSP games in Japan are sold at a much higher price, so people see the value in spending the $5 to $10 to get the digital copy. But when the games are already sold at a lower price in the U.S. we see less value in introducing that kind of system…”
Or for those of you not into the whole ‘Wall Of Text’ fad, he’s saying we aren’t getting them because he doesn’t see a reason for it. Whether you agree with this approach is a matter for discussion, certainly.