Read my above reply to Jerry. If done correctly, the kiosks would practically be self-fed points of sale, needing no further investment from Sony except for their initial establishment. Of course, this also depends on the price point established to transfer the games... And you also have to take into account the techies who will probably figure out one way to do this themselves.
Very true, but if the game was somehow linked directly to the system hardware, it would make it WAY more difficult for the potential crackers to find ways to circumvent the system, unless Sony plays a stupid move and hides their security in plain sight.
See, it's these two points here that have me questioning the whole thing, and here's why.
Recently, in a post on Kotaku, some Sony guy was discussing how the rampant piracy of PSP games is what's really hurting it so much, at least here in the US. Ninja Lou works at the 3rd best selling GameStop in the country, and I asked his boss today how the PSP sales were doing. The PSP sales were fine. However, the games aren't selling at all. It's real bad.
There in lies the problem. By my logic, Sony is making the PSP Go! to compete with the DSi as well as try to stop the piracy issue. From what I've learned over these years, it's that trying to stop nerds from doing what they want regarding this kind of thing is a completely fruitless effort. They WILL find a way, and Sony has to know this. So, this is my personal analysis of the whole situation:
-The people buying PSP's in the US are primarily hackers & people looking for a portable movie/MP3 device, that just happens to play games.
-These people aren't buying the games at all, due to lack of interest or the fact that they are pirating them.
-The PSP has about as much protection & security as Arkham Asylum.
-The people who own the PSP will possibly/only buy the PSP Go! if/when the codes and everything about it are cracked.
-The majority of PSP owners are cheap and/or pirates, do not care about/own/legally own the games, and thus will not spend the money to use the UMD-MemStick kiosk, which I'm guesstimating will cost no less than $10 a game.
-Sony will wind up losing money on all the kiosks that they have to put in every GameStop.
-Sony will wind up losing money on all the Digital Games either from people not buying them or pirates cracking the code.
-Sony will probably sell a decent amount of PSP Go!'s, but not enough to ever come close to competing with the DSi, which is probably just in it's infancy with showing what it can do.
Now, this is all just pure speculation on my part, as I'm not a business major either, nor do I have all the details. For all I know, instead of Kiosks, Sony will make a USB UMD-MemStick converter that can work via your PS3 or PC, and charge $30 for it. At least that way, you don't have to pay per game. However, we shall see how it will "Go!"