Sony has confirmed that NTSC-J and NTSC-U PSone emulators are currently being prepared for release on European PlayStation Stores.
While no dates or titles have yet been confirmed, SCEE PlayStation Store Team member Ross McGrath revealed in a blog post that there are already US and Japanese titles being processed for release in the future.
The upshot of this is that publishers which possess the rights to release PSone titles that were previously only available in the US and/or Japan will now be able to apply for a European release on the store pending appropriate rating board assessment.
Successful games will be published "as is" in their original English or Japanese language states and will require a 60 Hz display to run.
Developers and publishers will also have the option to put out US or Japanese approved games that failed the SCEE QA process, though they will need to be assessed for the region.
The move could see a flood of titles arriving on PSN that never made it to UK shores and echoes the untranslated release of Deathsmiles 2X on North America's Xbox Live Games on Demand service in May this year.
Source: European PlayStation blog
Comments
4All I want is Wipeout 2097, Wip3out and the two Gran Turismo games. You'd think those would be easiest for Sony given that they published them!
If this means I get to finally try Chrono Cross and Xenogears then it'll be worth it. These kinds of endeavours are the reason digital distribution is so important.
When the fudge is Parasite Eve 2 coming to the US store?! I am not buying the PAL version in stinking 50hz with its game squashing boarders and drop in speed.
for a second there i was hoping it would mean that i'll finally be able to play my ntsc ps1 games on my pal ps3 but i guess instead i can repurchase them if the become available.
honestly i don't understand why that isn't possible right now.