Shuhei Yoshida, the boss of Sony’s worldwide studios, claims that the UMD Passport program was scrapped for international offering because there seemed to be low demand and low pricing of titles.

The UMD Passport program, as we told you about before, allowed the owner to transfer their UMD-based titles to the Vita by paying a small fee. Originally, Sony was thought to be offering this option in all regions; but Sony apparently now believes that the demand is for new Vita titles, not old PSP titles.

Many we have spoken with believe that Sony has just placed another barrier to entry for those PSP owners who want to upgrade. As one analyst told us, “I can believe that maybe in Japan the demand was not there for UMD Passport, but I don’t think the same thing is going to be true in North America. I guess it is hard to tell when you are still not really moving that many systems.”

We will have to see if the decision really affects sale. We suspect that sales will continue to be slow, which will affect the adoption rate; and this in turn will impact the developers’ decisions on whether or not they are going to support the Vita platform.