Vita will not have any UMD tradein outside of Japan

[A Black Falcon]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2012/...-sales.ars

That is, the service they had in Japan to allow people to get downloadable copies of games they owned that they could play on the Vita, however precisely it works (I'm not sure). It's going to be a Japan-only program.

... Yeah, it's far from unexpected -- honestly, I'm not surprised at all -- but still it's very stupid... so yeah, the Vita's expensive, requires an overpriced memory card to completely use (or to download games to), and has no way to play your games you own on disc, period. Rebuy the ones that are available on PSN. How nice.

[Dark Jaguar]

Well the hackers are already making good progress on negating all these "security" features anyway. Seriously, their decision to use a proprietary card has done nothing at all considering all one need do is hack it on the PC side (a much easier proposition) when using the PC software to transfer files.

In other words, I think I'll just rip the games using my PSP and move them over that way. That is, if I decided to get a Vita to begin with.

[Weltall]

I'm glad this happened. It will give extra incentive to the homebrew community to hack the thing faster.

A PSP without custom firmware is a paperweight.

[A Black Falcon]

My PSP doesn't have custom firmware...

[Dark Jaguar]

It's very easy to get it set up these days. They got Sony's authentication key last year and went nuts with it. At this point, depending on which model of PSP you have, there's a host of options available, all easy. The difference will be that while they have the "execute this program" key, they never did crack the keys used in the boot process of the newest models, so some of them will still need to boot into unhacked mode, simply needing to execute the hacking program one time each boot.

Anyway, without further delay: http://psp.dashhacks.com/2012/02/06/all-...essentials

This should get you going. I'd go with the 6.60 version no matter which model. The compatibility lost with the lower firmware makes using a "perma" hack on newer models just not worth it. In the zip file you download, the only folder that matters is the "PSP" folder. Copy it onto the root of your memory stick and when it asks to "overwrite", say yes (it won't delete any files). Also be sure to get a nice program like Filer. Among other things, it can directly rip your PSP games onto your memory stick (if it's large enough), and that alone is a massive benefit, considering how much easier it is to carry your PSP games around and just how much faster PSP games load from the memory stick. In particular, a game like Puzzle Quest that has notorious load times on UMD has none on the memory stick.