Acclaim developer David Perry and Sony Europe boss John Koller have been having a bit of a public showdown over the new iteration of the PSP. Perry surprised the gaming community last week when he issued a short message over twitter claiming that he knew the PSP 2 was coming and that it had no UMD drive to speak of. Then, later in the week Sony spokesman John Koller went on record saying that Sony remains "committed to the UMD format".
Many gamers and journalists have wondered what might replace UMD if Perry is correct and Sony really is going to phase out the clunky optical storage media. We won’t be sad to see them go, honestly – slow load times and a drain on battery life made the optical disk format more of a drag than an asset. But how will those without high-speed internet connections or access to Wifi purchase games, if Sony removes the UMD packaging from shelves?
Well, one answer to the storage question is already in front of us – Sony could copy Nintendo. With the rapidly declining price of solid-state memory like SD cards, and Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick Pro Duo, why not just slap games on a specially designed cartridge? Load times would be instantaneous, battery drain would be minimized, and consumers would still be able to pick up titles in the shops. If you are worried about price, don’t be. A 2 GB memory card can currently be had for around $6. By the time the PSP 2 ships in 2010 or 2011, we expect the price of solid-state memory cards to be even lower.
