With the release of the download-only PlayStation Portable Go, it seems as though the days of the Universal Media Disc are all but behind Sony as they blaze the trail toward the digital-downloadable future. As such, the next inevitable PSP iteration will be sans UMD as well, right?

Well, maybe not, according to a pair of analysts, who instead believe that Sony's proprietary format will be supported by its next handheld.

On the showfloor of this year's Tokyo Game Show, developer buzz was that a 2010 PSP 4000 would indeed go back to the old way of playing games. And it seems that both Everyone's Favorite Analyst, Michael Pacther of Wedbush Morgan Securities, and EEDAR's Jesse Divnich follow the same belief.

"I think it is possible and likely that the PSP-4000 will support UMD, and I think that Sony will support whichever formats make it the most money," Pachter explained to Edge.

"It's an interesting dilemma," he continued. "Without question, there is room for packaged products and the benefits of digital-only are probably more than offset by foregone sales of UMDs. I think that the next version will likely have both, with a disc drive that uses no power if the user is playing a downloaded game. The question is whether it's too bulky, but my guess is that they can fit some flash in there, or equip the game with a 16Gb memory stick and consumers will be perfectly happy."

Divnich concurred, noting that while Sony might like nothing more than to leave the specter of UMD behind, such a move may not be a financially viable decision.

"Ultimately, businesses must meet the demand of consumers," he stated. "If the PSPgo fails to latch on as a standard model for the PSP, Sony has no choice but to continue to support the UMD format. If Sony had their way, they would eradicate the UMD standard in favour of digital distribution. Sony's primary goal with the UMD format was for it to catch on in other media players, unfortunately it didn't."

He added that Sony "has had horrible luck when it comes to creating media standards," listing off names such as Betamax, Minidisc, and Sony Dynamic Digital Sound as formats which all "failed to gain mass popularity, even though they were formats that provided superior technology to the current standard."

As an aside, how lucky is it for Sony that they finally pulled it off with Blu-ray?

Speaking of Blu-ray, Divnich says that the PSPgo is "three years ahead of its time, the same way the PS3 was ahead of its time." He adds that "regardless of the success of the PSPgo, ten years from now when the industry is mostly digital, we will look back and single out Sony and its PSPgo as being the first console to push us in the digital direction."

Hmm, perhaps. It more often seems as though ideas which were ahead of their time wind up all but forgotten to it.