I guess we'll have to see how this UMD to PSN rights-transfer service-thingy is handled, and, more significantly, priced. If it even materializes at all (which it didn't for PSP Go).
So far I think they are just completely blowing smoke that there is any way to uniquely identify one UMD from another, and that is why I think the price to add the PSN version of a UMD PSP game is so high (and up to the publisher): they anticipate people gaming the system by passing UMD's around and getting the PSN versions of the games tagged to their accounts.
There's just no avoiding that I'm a bit skeptical and untrusting of moving to digital distribution completely. This comes from being a collector, seeing games disappear from download services, be patched for content/editorial reasons without my consent... lots of reasons. Heck,
I even made a thread about trying to get physical copies of games, or the DLC of games, that are download-only when they launch. It's not the boxes on the shelf that concerns me, its future access, and control of that access.
But, since they're not asking us to turn in the UMDs to get the PSN downloads, I'd be willing to pay some amount for that service. But not the various prices I see bandied about, and not for a super-limited selection of titles like we're seeing now.
I guess it's too bad they didn't think ahead and use the technology from DIVX, that failed format competing with DVD (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX) to imprint a unique code on each UMD, because then I bet publishers would offer the service more willingly for a cheaper price. They'd be able to invalidate that UMD from being used again on another PSP to get another PSN copy of the game.
Double-dipping is only acceptable in one direction, you know.