It would be nice to turn on your PlayStation Portable and load up a title like Sonic II without having to use homebrew or an emulator, wouldn’t it? Sony seems to agree, as the company is actively seeking the rights to publish some older titles for download on its handy handheld. According to John Koller, the company is looking at publishing titles that didn’t previously release on PlayStation consoles, which would add some variety to the PlayStation Network’s downloadable catalog.
"In general there’s a lot of discussion about [publishers’] back catalogues that will finally find its way to PlayStation Network in the back half of this year," SCEA hardware marketing boss John Koller told MTV Multiplayer.
"PSOne is included, but everything is on the table…We look for some of those big hits from all of the past games in their history and look for ways we can bring them over. It’s not always easy. There’s obviously technical areas that need to be bridged. But when those are solved, consumers will see a wide variety of retro games and brand new games coming to PSN."
When it boils down to it, this sounds an awful lot like Nintendo’s Virtual Console on the Wii, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Would you like to see more old games on the PlayStation Network, or should Sony look forward, not backward?