PSP World

Why Is Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep on UMD Only?

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep is not available on Sony's premium handheld platform, the PSP Go. This fact didn't bother us before, but after recently picking up a PSP Go for $149 as part of Amazon's cyber Monday sale, this fact has suddenly become annoying. It seems that at least two big releases aren't available on our new platform: Invizimals (because of the lack of camera) and Birth By Sleep. Invizimals we can understand, because changes to the hardware mean that the camera peripheral no longer fits on the system. Fine. But why can't we play Square Enix's massively popular series on our download-only devices?

The answer is to be found not with the offices of Square Enix, but with their partner in the franchise, Disney. It would be an understatement to suggest that the American company is a bit paranoid when it comes to protecting its intellectual property. Recent legislation to extend the copyright term in the united States bears the nickname "Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act" precisely because of lobbying by the corporation to change the law in its favor. Disney simply doesn't want to see any bootleg versions of its licensed characters running around in back alley shops.

With piracy a major issue on the PSP from day one, Disney and Square Enix decided to implement failsafe code to keep their precious game from running off of a memory stick, the preferred method of PSP pirates. The code worked exceptionally well -- it took months for pirates to finally crack Birth By Sleep. But an unpleasant circumstance is that the game cannot be played from ANY memory stick, no matter whether it was purchased legitimately or not. It might be possible for the game to run from the special internal memory of the PSP Go, but so far Square Enix has not explored that possibility. Since the PSN platform is open to users of the older PSP models, It would be quite complicated to release the game digitally for the PSP Go only, and exclude everybody else. Hence, the title has remained chained to the physical UMD format.

Is it possible that we will see a digital download version in the future? Yes, after Disney and Squenix sell enough copies of the original game to offset the risk of piracy.