More PSP Games compatible with PS Vita than initial 275-game list lets on

"Last week I posted a news story where Sony tells you how to transfer digital PSP games from your PSN SEN account. Along with the simple instructions, they also provided a list of Vita-compatible games, a paltry 275 out of the several hundred available for purchase on the PlayStation Store. I was sad that many of my favorites didn't seem to make the initial cut -- Valkyria Chronicles II, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, and were the ones that hurt the most.

Well, it seems that several games were inexplicably left off of that list, as several people are reporting that Valkyria Chronicles II is transferrable from a PS3. I tried it out and can confirm it to be true. I also gave a few other unlisted games a shot, and was able to transfer Puzzle Quest and Crush. Alas, PixleJunk Monsters is indeed currently incompatible."

[Ulf]

It's very likely that many games simply have not been run through the QA ringer on the Vita yet, and thus Sony doesn't want to portray them as fully playable on the Vita, until they have a small army of QA testers verify that it's true.

275 games is a LOT to verify, unless you have several thousand testers, which I'm sure Sony probably doesn't -- it probably took 6 months or longer just to get those verified. I'm not at all surprised to see some of the longer RPGs (which require 30-40 hours to play through) not yet verified.

I also won't be surprised to see that number exceed 400 by the time the holidays roll around -- maybe more.

[WonsAuto]

Fair point, but it seems that they've verified more than what they bothered to list. They wouldn't be transferrable otherwise, after all.

[Ulf]

Non-working games are also transferable, though.

I don't think there are any restrictions on what you can try to transfer -- its just that, if its not available for a Vita in the Store, it just means it hasn't been verified by Sony to actually work.

I'll bet that most of the downloadable PSP library will probably be available at some point. Some games may require small fixes to the emulation software, etc. (meaning an OS update), so they may not work initially, but its always possible that they will, eventually.

[darthv72]

I was asking the guy there about some of the vita's media features. such as if it would play digital copies of movies like what you get with movies now-a-days.

We got on the topic of psp game compatibility and he showed me the titles available through the vita store. I have a PSP Go and have several games on it. Resistance retribution, killzone liberation, dante's inferno and several mini's. Sadly, while the mini's were supported, the psp games I asked about weren't.

It would be great if at some point there was a patch for resistance to make it work with the vita but more importantly...the 2nd stick.

Now can anyone confirm if games save to the game cards or is the memory card required for that? He said the memory card was required but I thought sony said saves would be on the game cards themselves which explains the lack of internal memory or inclusion of a memory card.

[Ulf]

@darthv72:

I can confirm that some games save to the game card itself. I dunno if that's true for all of them... I imagine so. So you DON'T need a memory card after all, unless you're planning on having old PSP games onboard, movies, music, etc. Basically its *exactly* the same as the 3DS, in this regard.

Also, I doubt 2nd-stick patches are incoming... game devs would need to spend 10s of thousands of $$ to do such a thing, which would entail thousands of *NEW* digital sales to be worthwhile, given the cheap prices of many PSP games these days. However, I seem to recall that MH3 already has support for a 2nd analog. Resistance: Retribution also did, via a PS3 controller, but I don't know if that will just simply work on the Vita, or if patching would be necessary.

I wanted to point out that some of the games you mentioned are Sony-published games, too. I think they probably stand the best chance of eventually being compatible, if they aren't already, for obvious reasons.

[darthv72]

thanks for that info. Too bad about resistance though. while i have played it using a sixaxis controller, you had to have the ps3/psp link on at all times for it to work.

A neat idea that wasnt used very much. With the GO you could use a sixaxis directly. I was bummed that the vita didnt have tv out like previous psp models. I can imagine that sony saved some $$ on that but I can also imagine the vita docked to a tv and offering upscaling for games and media and use of a controller or move wand (due to it having a built in camera).

Maybe those are some things they will work on if they were to revise the unit down the road.

[IaMs12]

I didn't even know there was that many PSP games to be honest.

[Lulz_Boat]

GTA LCS and VCS are working too (european PS Store)

[IM_KINECTED]

That is great news, I have a ton of PSP games that I'll be able to play on the Vita when I finally get one. Looking like my birthday in May is going to be pretty sweet!

[GraveLord]

""Last week I posted a news story where Sony tells you how to transfer digital PSP games from your PSN SEN account""

WTF? It's just called PSN. Nothing has changed. I'm embarrassed for you.

[WonsAuto]

PSN is crossed out when viewed within the article. The formatting doesn't carry over when you post on N4G.