A Tale of Two PSP Stores

When I heard that a Patapon demo was available last Thursday, I immediately started looking for it.  I booted up my PSP, opened up the web browser and selected the “PSP” bookmark that was preloaded onto the PSP. It brings you to the “Official PSP Website”, from which you can select “PSP Games & Demos” and select from a variety of downloads that you can bring directly onto your PSP.  It’s actually quite simple to do, as it’s just a matter of clicking the demo you want and it automatically downloads to your memory stick, ready for you to play.  However, the demo was not, and still is not, available from here.  In fact, there’s not even an indication that a demo for Patapon was released.  It instead highlights demos for Loco Roco and World Tour Soccer ‘06.

So where was the Patapon demo?  On the Playstation Store for PC, of course.  In fact, the Playstation Store for PC has a completely different catalog of demos than the “PSP” bookmark that’s on the PSP itself.  Right now on the Playstation Store you can download demos for Patapon, MLB ‘08, Harvey Birdman, Puzzle Guzzle, Socom: Tactical Strike, and Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow.  None of these are available for download directly to your PSP from the “PSP” bookmark in the web browser.

So how do you get your PSP demos from your PC onto your PSP?  Well, first you need a PC, obviously.  Then you need to make sure you have the proper USB cable.  I’m not sure if any mini-USB to standard USB cable will work, but I have one from my PS3 and one from my Logitech Harmony remote that seem to do the trick.  I suppose if you don’t have one of those, you’ll have to find one for yourself.  Finally, you need to install some software from the PC store and create an account.  Once you have all that, you just set your PSP to “USB” mode and click on the demos you want to download, and the software will handle the installation for you.  That’s a lot more of a hassle than the simple PSP interface, and if you try to browse to the store via the PSP, it will tell you that you can only access it from a PC.

So it begs the question, why are these two systems for downloading demos completely different?   I can understand the appeal of having a store accessible on the PC, but why not make the “store” on the PSP the same?  Shouldn’t I be able to download these directly from the PSP as well?  Why should it be such a hassle just to get the newest demos onto my PSP?