Last week saw the launch of the PC Playstation Portable store, heralding the dawn of a new era in the checkered history of Sony’s debut handheld console. No longer is downloadable content exclusive to those with the Playstation 3, as every PSP owner with access to an internet-enabled PC can now download games, demos, wallpapers and additional content at the click of a button.

Looking back on the decisions that were made when the PSP was originally in its design phase, the use of UMD for games storage is surely the one major regret that Sony will have. Clearly they were attempting to push a new portable movie format, but somewhere along the way they forgot that games were the primary function of the PSP. UMDs have proved to be particularly slow-loading, which has crippled some otherwise well made games for the system.

Now that Sony has a digital distribution outlet in place, the opportunity is there to slowly phase out the use of UMD in favour of games downloaded directly onto the user’s memory stick. Not only will this all but eradicate the slow-loading times via UMD, but the relative low cost of distributing games via this medium should lead to a string of low budget, innovative games from both smaller developers and as side-projects for the larger development houses.

The first title to take advantage of the PSP store is ‘Beats’, a rhythm-action game from Sony’s London Studio, which is available at the entirely reasonable price of £4.99 in the UK store and across Europe, and is expected to launch in North America in the coming weeks.

The primary experience offered by ‘Beats’ is similar to that of any rhythm-action game, in that it requires the player to hit buttons in time with music as the beats come across the screen. However, the major selling-point for ‘Beats’ above other similar titles is that it allows you to use any of your own MP3 tracks stored on the PSP as the basis for the game-play.

This could have proved to be no more than a gimmick if the game was unable to calculate accurately the placement of the beats, but with almost any track you can throw at it ‘Beats’ performs commendably. From Reggae, to Dance, to Samba, to Hip-Hop, most songs that have a distinctive drum pattern are plotted perfectly in-game, whilst it also does an admirable job on most rock tracks, very rarely straying from the natural rhythm. The most impressive track I tested was GZA’s ‘Shadowboxin’, where not only were the drum placements excellent, but even the ‘wo-man’ vocal sample was picked up and used as an input.