Sony plans to keep PSP downloads at 'pricing parity,' whatever that means

Here's a great scenario for you, if you happen to be Sony's wallet: charge $250 for a handheld console without a physical game media option, and then charge on average $5 more for downloaded titles than they go for at retail, since you have zero competition in the download space. That seems to be SCEA's definition of "price parity" right now for the PSP, though in Japan downloadable titles have been on average slightly cheaper than their physical counterparts. Sure, it's rough on retailers if they have to compete with a lower-than-MSRP price coming straight Sony, but the likes of Amazon are already at below MSRP on plenty of titles, and we're not so sure consumers are going to take kindly to paying more for less (in the physical sense, anyway) after they already splurged hard on the PSP Go... not that they'll have much choice in the matter, outside of trying their luck at the old swap-a-roo.

[Via Joystiq]