Could the PlayStation Store Actually End up on PSPs?

PlayStation Portable owners had to wait what seemed like an eternity to get any form of the promised PlayStation Store on their handhelds. At first, the PlayStation 3 brought along a way for you to purchase PS one classics and transfer them to your PSP, and then just recently, the PlayStation Store was launched on PCs. But wouldn’t the obvious thing to do be a PlayStation Store designed to work directly on the PSP?

What an alarming concept.

Apparently Sony is “definitely” considering this, according to Sony’s Eric Lempel.

Clearly that’s something we’re thinking about. With the capability of the PSP it’s something that should be possible, so it’s definitely something we’re thinking about. It’s just a matter of priorities and some technology that we need to make it all work right and make sure the content is delivered securely, just to protect some of our [intellectual properties].

When asked why the PC was ever brought into the equation, Lempel explained that it was simply easier and alleviated certain technical problems.

For one thing it was easier. It was easier to create the service and the system on the PC at first. Also, with a lot of content, the PSP is great and has a great screen, but we would need to create a different type of navigation, a different type of browsing system to get through all the content that will be on there.

There are also technical challenges behind the scenes that lean toward delivering the content securely, making sure it is protected. Especially because we are dealing with paid content. That creates some challenges as well. That’s why when you use the PC store you use the PlayStation Network downloader application. You download that app quickly and it delivers it securely to your PSP and also protects the content. We figured we could wait and take longer to develop [the store] just for the PSP, but we wanted to get this out sooner rather than later. And also if you look at other space of portable devices, if you look at something like an iTunes, it’s kind of the same thing. I guess the downside is the Apple devices don’t go online, so you wouldn’t expect to buy something from the site but at the same time people are used to going to a PC to purchase a lot of content and download them to the device.

Given the long wait period for the current iteration of the PlayStation Store, I wouldn’t hold my breath for a version of the Store on PSPs.

Read the full interview at MTV Multiplayer.