With the PSP Go’s distinctly anticlimactic release, there have been many rumors floating around regards the direction of Sony’s troubled handheld wonder. So for this week’s Rumor Killers, Jennifer Allen decided to round up the best PSP-related rumors and determine just how plausible they really are. Here’s a Rumor Killers PSP Special

Rentals coming for PSP Go?

The possibility of downloadable rentals has appeared after The Retail Gamer dug into their shiny, new PSP Go. It noticed something seemingly innocuous that could well reveal what is the start of a whole new world. Upon re-sorting the PSP’s system folders, it turned out that there was only one option available, and that was to re-arrange according to expiry date. But why would downloaded games need an expiry date? Is this to let players download and play games for a few days as part of a rental service?

Physical rental services such as Blockbuster are already in great decline with much of this being attributed to the increased costs involved during a recession. It makes sense that the next step is to rent games online. With services on both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Marketplace allowing players to download full games, and with faster broadband speeds available now, it certainly would be the most convenient option for the average gamer. Plus, with the precedent set by the PSP Go’s inability to play UMDs, the option to download games as a rental, as an alternative to purchase, would surely be welcomed by PSP Go owners. With the PSP Go’s large memory stick capacity and the 16 gigabyte internal memory, this surely makes perfect sense.

It was only a few months ago when Joystiq uncovered a survey asking consumers whether they would be interested in a PSP game rental service. The survey asked whether consumers would want a set monthly fee for the service and suggested that both recent and older titles might be available through it. It’s certainly a plausible, indeed attractive concept that I’m sure would be extremely useful.

As has been already been mentioned, however, the PSP and PlayStation 3 had expiry date implementation in the past, typically used for things such as beta tests. However, this doesn’t explain the market research survey. I suspect this is something that Sony may well be researching and possibly planning to implement in the future. Considering the huge amount of items put on PSN in time for the PSP Go’s launch, I suspect it won’t be any time soon as it would already be up by now. However, it may well be something that gets added later on in the PSP’s lifespan.

TGR says: True but not yet