Sony Launches Playstation Store for PC

Who is with me in saying, “It’s about time!”? Up until now, if you wanted to purchase and download a PSOne or PSP game to a PSP, you needed to have a PS3. Highly inefficient, since most PSP owners don’t own a PS3. That’s now changed though, as Sony has unveiled the Playstation Store for the PC, which allows people to download classic games (at a price of course), trailers and other fun things, directly to their PSP.

For games, the process works like this: You purchase the game, download the official PSP installer tool, click “Download” in the shopping cart and Windows will take over and automatically download the full game and install it to your PSP. Being a Linux user, I wanted to see how the process went there, and I can confidently say that it’s a hassle. I am not doubting it can be achieved if you have some time on your hands though. I was at a point where the PSP was detected, but when the time came to connect to the server to download the game, it would time out. Wine error logs tell me that the specific feature needed for that functionality is not yet implemented.

One thing I do like about the service though, is that games you’ve purchased are kept in a download list, including games you purchased with the PS3. So, should you delete the game later on (which can be backed up easily to begin with), you can go ahead and redownload it later on. So far the service is solid, but more PSP-specific (including PSOne) games would be great.

PS one Classic titles will be available from Day 1 on the PlayStation Store for the PC including favorites such as WipEout and Crash Bandicoot, with many more on the way. PLAYSTATION Store for the PC users will also find add-on game content, trailers for forthcoming titles, promotional videos and PSP themes.

Source: Playstation Blog