Finally, some good news out of Sony. The company announced that it’s going to remaster PSP games for the Playstation 3, with high-definition graphics, new content and possibly 3D support.

Best of all, the players’ progress in a game will be transferable between either platform, so you can pick up on the PS3 where you left off on the PSP, and vice versa. Japan will get the first PSP remaster with Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, a hugely-popular game in that country. It’s not clear what other games or regions are in the works, but hopefully the E3 trade show in June will bring some clarity.

There’s a lot of potential in this idea. Gaming across handheld and home gaming systems has been a mythical beast in the games industry. Microsoft had promised this kind of interplay between Windows Phone 7 and the Xbox 360, but the company is progressing slowly on this front. Some iOS games can be played on a TV through HDMI, but Apple TV has yet to become an iOS gaming platform on its own.

Sony, meanwhile, has planted the seeds to do big things here, and not just between the PSP and PS3. The company is also trying to set up a Playstation platform on Android phones, with original Playstation games. If Sony can extend this platform, called Playstation Suite, to include PSP games, players could conceivably run the same game on their phones, PSPs and PS3s. That would be awesome.

Right now, remastering is just just a minor development on a single game in a single region. I hope Sony’s thinking a lot bigger.

 
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