The announcement of the new PSPgo left a lot of PSP owners with questions about software.  Without a UMD drive (thank you), the new model won’t play any of the PSP’s existing UMD-based games, leaving a lot of gamers with essentially worthless software once they inevitably trade in their PSP 3000s for PSPgos.  Additionally, while it’s assumed that most, if not all of the PSP’s upcoming titles will be available by download in addition to the retail UMD releases, but we don’t know for sure.  While they may not answer all of our questions, Sony did reveal some details that let us know what the future holds for the second-place handheld console.

On Sunday, June 8, Sony’s Social Media Manager, Jeff Rubenstein stated on the PlayStation blog that “It’s my understanding that just about everything hitting after October 1 will be available for download.”  Jeff was only referring to first-party titles, so we still don’t know if third-party games will be available for download, but one would assume that most of them will.  Today, Rubenstein followed up, talking about the system’s existing library.  “The majority of back catalog PSP games will be made available for download around the launch of the PSPgo."  This time, Joystiq contacted Jeff to clarify whether he was talking only about first-party games, and he responded, "the majority overall” will be made available without a UMD.

While this does clear up some of the confusion, it still doesn’t address the question of re-buying existing games.  If you have the UMD version, will you have to pay for the digital copy again, or will there be some system that allows players to re-download games for free?  It also begs the questions “How long will Sony support the PSP 3000s?,” “Is there a way to physically transfer a UMD copy to a digital one?,” and “No, seriously, how long will Sony support the PSP 3000s?  Like two weeks?”  Time will tell, starting on October 1.