Play PS3 Games On PSP?

Despite a release set for less than a month from now, numerous questions linger about the PlayStation 3. In the latest issue of Famitsu, Sony's Izumi Kawanishi, the guy in charge of the development of both the PS3 and the PSP hardware, cleared up a few of our concerns and also hinted at big things to come in the future.

The biggest revelation from Kawanishi concerns the connectivity options Sony has planned for the PSP and PS3. It's already known that you'll be able to use your PSP as a remote viewer for your PS3's media content. At launch, the two systems will have to be within direct ad-hoc connection range of one-another, but following launch, Sony plans to extend the functionality across the internet.

Kawanishi revealed to Famitsu that Sony's plans go beyond just media viewing, though. In the future, Sony hopes to allow players to play PS3 games remotely via the PSP. While Kawanishi didn't get into specifics, we imagine the PSP being used just to display game footage sent to it by the PS3 and send back controller data input by the player.

This type of connectivity has apparently been on the cards for some time. Kawanishi noted that he had such a system in mind when making the PSP's aspect ratio identical to that of high definition televisions, 16x9.

In other parts of the interview, Kawanishi tackled a few lingering issues.

First up, a caveat to PSP connectivity. The Famitsu article warns that you'll be able to use the PSP as a remote media player only if you purchase the 60 Gig PS3 model, which has Wi-Fi built in. It's unclear if the same functionality can be achieved by connecting your 20 Gig model to a USB Wi-Fi socket or by hooking it up directly to a wireless router. We'll be sure and run some tests once (if?) we get a system at launch.

Kawanishi also commented on region free software. This feature, which has been confirmed by various Sony reps in the past, is indeed a reality. "It's often been the case that past game systems would have a region code system, and would not play overseas games," explained Kawanishi. "However, PlayStation 3 game software does not have this region code. In other words, if you can get your hands on overseas software, you can play as is. There are exceptions, however, so SCE does not make guarantees about operation".

Finally, some details on how you'll be updating your PS3's system software. Kawanishi revealed that, in addition to updating via the internet, Sony plans on letting users update via flash memory (presumably by downloading update files to a memory card) and via game and media software. These two latter options sound similar to Sony's current policy of forced PSP system software updates.

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