Sony has announced the UMD Passport program, allowing owners of PSP UMD games to play their games on the PlayStation Vita at discounted prices. So far the program has only been confirmed for Japan, but it’s likely that the program will be extended to international PSP customers as well.
Sony has unveiled a new line of PSP bundles called “Dual Packs”. This week, three different dual packs will be available to purchase, which include two popular games in one package for only $14.99. A perfect bargain if you are looking to pick up some classic titles for your PSP.
To aid NIS America’s decision to release Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! on UMD, a UMD pre-order process has been started. Fans of the game have been asking for a UMD release for some time, but NISA is concerned about the actual demand. You can pre-order your copy from RosenQueen.com. However, in order to make it possible for NISA to manufacture the UMD, they will have to get at least 1000 orders.
In news that may have an impact on Sony’s new handheld sales, a rep told Kotaku today that the company has scrapped plans for a system to transfer disc-based UMD games to work on the digital-only PSPgo. The Sony Computer Entertainment of America spokesperson said the UMD conversion program will not be available at this time for legal and technical reasons.
In an effort to entice current PSP owners to Go and upgrade to the new PSP model, Sony is launching a “PSP Go Rewards” program, where you can get your hands on three games free of charge. First, you have to register a PSP Go on PSN. Then you have to log into PSN using your old PSP with a UMD in the drive. From there, you can download a PSP Go Theme and receive an email carrying a voucher.
The UMD is finally about to bite the dust, according to David Perry of Shiny Entertainment. In a twitter update, Perry said “Sony finally removed the stupid battery-sucking UMD disc drive”. Of course, this hasn’t been confirmed by Sony so place it under the rumor category for now. In related developments, the PSP2 is indeed real according to Perry once again. He states that a developer he knows is currently working on it right now, which leads us to believe that prototypes are already available.
The PSPgo does not have a physical UMD drive, making the unit much more compact and light. You can, however, play old UMD titles by purchasing them from the PlayStation Store. Hundreds of titles are available to purchase from the PlayStation Store, with new titles added each week.
Use the Media Go application or visit the PlayStation store on your PSP or PS3 to see what’s available.
Before you can begin backing up UMDs, you require a few things, they are:
To backup a UMD, follow the below instructions:
Download:
[UMD Ripping Tools]
[UMDGen]
[UMDNetRipper]
[UMDTool]
Some ripping applications dump a UMD as files instead of a ISO image, an example is UMD Tool. You can convert the files into an ISO, CSO, DAX or EZIP image using either UMDGen or Epsilon’s EZIP Tool. UMDGen supports conversion to ISO, CSO and DAX. The Epsilon EZIP tool allows conversion from ISO to EZIP, but you cannot reverse the process.
Please remember that ripping games is illegal unless you own the game.
