Sony Computer Entertainmentâs Naoya Matsui has revealed that the PSPgo had always been on the drawing board at Sony, but is only being released now because the market was ready for it.
âWeâd planned to release a PSP model without a UMD drive since the very beginning,â he told Japanâs GameBusiness. âBut if weâd simply released the hardware, there wouldnât have been much for everyone to enjoy. We needed to prepare the right environment for it first â things like the transferral of content with the PS3 and PSN, and PC software to manage content like music and movies such as âMedia Go'â.
âWe wanted to release it when the delivery of digital content was on par with the delivery of physical media. Thatâs what weâve been working on these past two years. Weâll be selling the PSPgo alongside the existing PSP models, because itâs a product targeted at those people who are more accustomed to digital content.â
Poor UMD. It never stood a chance!
Sony planned UMD-less PSP âfrom the beginningâ [Develop]