Due out Feb. 22, Sony’s PlayStation Vita handheld can’t play physical games from its predecessor, the PSP, because the Vita lacks a disc drive. But many of the PSP’s downloadable games will work on the Vita, and you can transfer them over via a relatively simple — if time-consuming — practice.

The PlayStation Blog has the rundown on the transfer process. If you own a PSP and a bunch of downloadable games that you’d like to move over to the Vita, you can download the games onto the new device by accessing the download list under your account settings.

If you’ve also got a PlayStation 3 with a bunch of free hard drive space, you can get a jump on the process by moving the games to the console via a USB cable, then transferring the games from the PS3 to the Vita. Moving the games via USB will most likely take far less time than re-downloading everything.

Before you attempt all that dirty work, click the source link for the list of 275 PSP downloads that will currently play on the Vita to see if your games are included. Sony is promising it will make more games available in the coming weeks.

How to Download PSP Titles to PS Vita [PlayStation Blog]

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