[quote name='sokari']There are pros and cons to both media. If the physical copy breaks, you're stuck with an oddly-shaped paperweight, forever. With a digital medium, you have unlimited backups, but you'll require internet access to actually download them. And if the game is rather size-heavy, that may take an awfully long amount of time (if you're impatient anyways), not to mention the memory sticks needed to store more games (regarding PSPs in general).[/quote]
In the good old days, companies insured the discs. After all, the disc costs them a few cents, it's the data on it that you paid for. Case in point: media for Microsoft products is much cheaper than licenses for the same.
Here's the bigger problem: in ten years, will Sony care anymore about these old "PSP 1" ancient crusty releases? I bet not. I've seen so many things like this fade away, even from big companies... unless I can store them in some way (PSP you can, at least for now), it means they have an expiration date. I don't buy $50 cheese, I dunno about you.
Coincidentally, DRM has the same problem. I like old things, I go back and play NES games like Crystalis and Dragon Warrior that I still have the carts for. I'm glad they didn't have "BEST IF SOLD BY:" dates on them.
Also, while trading in games may benefit consumers and used-games dealers, the practice hurts publishers, developers, and the developer of the console itself (and all other middle-men). As such, I don't see why they (Sony) would wish to particularly induce ("encourage") consumers to trade in games.
Middle men are how my industry works (I am a developer.) If it weren't for middle men, your movies, music, games, and software would probably all cost 50% what they do now. The bad part is you'd probably never know they existed.
Some people are interested in used games only. These sales do not directly benefit the publishers, but they do put money into the pockets of people who buy new games, which in turn benefits the developers (assuming they make good games and not shovelware.) Worse, without used games, piracy may increase (instead of retail sales.)
Thus, the only people afraid of used game sales are people who make "regret ware", not people who make good games.
Trading is, however, completely useless and annoying to developers... unfortunately. Except for those who develop series based games, potentially.
On topic. Anyone else holding out for a second generation of the Go! before biting? I still feel screwed over (maybe not so much) once the 2000s rolled out and saw how much better they were. But I really do like the portability of this one...
I plan to wait a year. If the price has not lowered by then, I'm sure something else will be announced. One will definitely happen.
I think they're playing the game of "people who have to have the newest thing" with this price. You see it all the time with computer hardware - there, it can be half the price in 3-6 months.
-[Unknown]