Earlier today the news broke that European owners of the new Sony PlayStation Portable variation called the PSPgo will be able to acquire three free downloadable games once verifying that they own the UMD versions of the games up for grabs.  The question about how this program will play out in North America came up immediately after the news hit, and now Kotaku has an answer.  As it turns out, there will be no UMD trade-in program in North America.  So much for meeting customers halfway.

"We were evaluating a UMD conversion program, but due to legal and technical reasons we will not be offering the program at this time," a Sony Computer Entertainment of America spokesman told Kotaku.

So, to sum it all up: Sony wants you to buy a portable game system that costs more and does less than the cheaper version of the same basic hardware that's already on the market.  Yeah, this whole PSPgo thing makes perfect financial sense, doesn't it?  Don't preorder all at once, gang.  There's plenty of the baffling business plan to go around.