The PlayStation Portable seems to be doing very well lately.  It, along with its counterpart the Nintendo DS, seems to be a haven for quirky RPGs of all sorts coming out of Japan.  If you like music and like RPGs, perhaps the latest JRPG announcement for the PSP might pique your interest.

NIS recently announced that Princess Antiphona’s Hymn: Angel’s Score Op.A will hit the hand-held in Japan in October.  Unfortunately, I have not played similar music-RPG fusion titles, like the PS1 and DS game Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (published by Atlus, unsurprisingly), but the more I read about it, the more interesting it sounds.  A lot of people might find a game that has musical numbers in its cut scenes a bit…off.  And it is, for American gamers.  But, not in Japan, where previous musical RPGs have garnered a huge following.

I’m reminded of the musical numbers in various episodes of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.  I thought they were odd at first, but it didn’t take long and I realized how well they fit into the idiosyncratic nature of the series overall.  Then, I think of something like that in an anime-style RPG and a smile spread across my face.

Here’s hoping Nippon Ichi intends to localize Princess Antiphona (for short) for a North American release sometime in the future.

Its coming, that day where all our games will be downloaded straight to our hardware without the hassle of going out to a brick and mortar store to buy the game and then finding a space to store it on a shelf somewhere. The PlayStation Network, Xbox Live and Wii Ware services are all in full swing with new download-only titles coming out every week. The PSP has its own PSN store and, soon, will have an iteration of its hardware that has no physical media drive – everything you play on it must be downloaded.

The day I spoke of is likely many years off yet – a day when all games will be downloaded. The reason for this is two-fold. First, these titles are, at their largest on BluRay discs, nearly 50 gigabytes of data. Imagine trying to download MGS4onto your PS3 through a typical residential high-speed Internet connection. Then, imagine poking your eyes out with a screwdriver. Case in point. Games are simply too large to make a service like this feasible. This is why game downloads are limited mostly to demos, games designed for digital distribution only or “classic” titles put up to make more money.

There is a second reason and, to be honest, this reason might well still be a roadblock long after the previous reason actually becomes a moot point. Certain brick and mortar retailers have a lot of clout in the gaming industry – GameStop and Best Buy in particular (in the U.S., at least). Since the PSP Go was announced, there’s already been rumblings from some retailers about disliking the direction this hardware is going, perhaps even threatening to not carry the hardware at all.

So, publishers and developers have a fine line to walk, especially now. Which games to they release as a physical product? Which ones to they distribute digitally? Do they sell the game in both formats? Which way is more profitable? Remember, it all comes down to the almighty dollar (or euro or yen or whatever).

When it comes to niche titles – most notably RPGs – it seems that a digital distribution method would be most effect and most profitable. This is what I see happening to a lot of titles from publishers like Atlus, NIS and XSEED- a game is released that next to no one knows about, it has a limited distribution or publication period. Retailers might stock a few copies over their pre-orders, but when all those are gone in a week or two, you never see another one on the shelf. Used copies end up selling for more than the original new copy because the game is so hard to find and a lot of people who might want to play it never get the chance.

Instead, imagine a digital distribution method for these games. They’re put up on the PSN or XBLA, displayed prominently on the front page for a few weeks and are there forever for anyone who wants to purchase and download it. No pouring through used games at GameStop, or paying through the nose on eBay for a copy. I see niche games released in this manner to gain more popularity and, ultimately, be more profitable than the way in which they’re released now – on physical media. Of course, you can still have your limited edition physical copies, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. But the game itself would still be available any time for download.

Why not all games, you ask?  Big-budget, triple-A titles usually have tons and tons of promotion and shelf space to make themselves known.  Niche titles do not.  They would be infinitely more exposed on the front page of a download service like PSN.  Also, niche titles tend to be smaller in file size, like PSP, DS or PS2 games…although we are seeing more PS3 and 360 titles that would match the criteria of being marketed toward a niche crowd.

Perhaps then great games like Crimson Gem Saga (which I had a hard time finding just a week after release), Jeanne d’Arc (which actually is available to download on the PSN), Ar Tonelico and Disgaea might end up in more gamers’ libraries. Whatever else the PSP Go is – overpriced, a rip-off, whatever you want to call it – it stands to be a good medium for these niche developers to give their games more visibility and open gamers who may not have gotten the chance to try some of these great games to a whole new world of gaming.

There will undoubtedly always be a need for brick and mortar stores to provide products of the gaming industry to consumers, but that doesn’t mean they can’t work together with a digital distribution method – even more so than they are now – to save these niche titles from being lost to gaming history.