Sony’s new handheld gaming system, the Playstation Vita, officially launches on the 22nd of this month, but those of us who pre-ordered the “First Edition Bundle” should be getting theirs next Wednesday (the 15th of February). Things are really heating up for the Vita launch, in both good and bad ways.

Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first. First, in Japan Sony tried out something called the UMD Passport Service. This was a way for owners of Sony Playstation Portal titles on that system’s UMD format to get digital copies of their games for the Vita (at a cost, but less than the cost of re-purchasing the titles). Sony has announced that they won’t be bringing this program to North America and this announcement is causing much angst in various comment streams.

From what I can tell, the program was kind of a failure in Japan anyway. When it launched there were over 600 games available for the PSP but only 262 of them were covered by the program. Notable names like Capcom, Square Enix and Konami opted not to participate, so arguably the most popular games on the system, like Monster Hunter, weren’t covered. Here’s a post at Siliconera from last November talking about the situation.

Sony was in a no-win situation here. They’re getting blasted for not bringing the program to North America, but if they brought it here they would’ve been blasted for not offering every title through the program. In my opinion it was a smart idea to get all the bile out now rather than have an unsatisfying program lingering on for months after the Vita launched. It would’ve been a smarter idea to make sure all the big publishers were on board with the program before ever announcing it, but that’s water under the bridge.