Porn comes to Sony's PSP

Both companies are promising more releases throughout the rest of the year. Taisei will put on sale two more adult movies later this month and five titles in August on UMD, and HMP said there will be more coming in September.

The discs will only go on sale in Japan but that doesn't necessarily mean they won't work on foreign models of the PSP. HMP is not using a region code so its titles will work on all PSPs, while the Glay'z discs will carry region code 2, which covers Japan. HMP's discs are the cheapest of those announced so far, at ¥1,995 (US$17.80), while the Taisei titles will cost either ¥2,940 or ¥3,990.

Several English-language Web sites that specialize in shipping Japanese games or entertainment to the rest of the world are already offering the UMDs at slightly higher prices.

SCEI keeps tight control of game content for its consoles.

The PSP has a parental lock system on it and parents can set the unit to block certain content. "We do urge content makers to comply with the rating system," said Kato.

In addition, SCEI controls game content by requiring game developers to license its software. As a result, there's no adult software for any console in the PlayStation range.

However, no such license is required for video and audio discs, and SCEI said it has no control over video content published for the PSP.

"It's up to the content makers," said Nanako Kato, a spokeswoman for SCEI in Tokyo.

That's is important because SCEI's parent company Sony is trying to spread the UMD format beyond the PSP, and has said it hopes other devices, possibly from other companies, will adopt it. Regardless of the license, Sony could still control the content published on UMD if it wanted to: it has the only factory capable of making UMDs at present.