Media Go is the Sony equivalent of iTunes. It allows you to organise and browse your media library on PC, and also serves as a PC-based content management tool for PlayStation Portable as well as other Sony devices. You can use it to access the PSP side of the PlayStation Store, back up game saves and transfer any other content from your PSP to your PC’s hard drive.

The latest update for Media Go has just been released (version 1.8), and thankfully it fixes the PlayStation Store access issue which plagued v1.7 after the service resumed in early June. Although this problem didn’t affect all Media Go users, others (including myself) were completely shut out of the PS Store due to a faulty update link in the program.

After extensively testing Media Go’s PS Store functionality in v1.8 I can safely say that there are still some issues which need to be ironed out. Many of the links to games or media don’t work when you click on them, and yet those same links will function perfectly if you exit the program and try again. I experienced these randomly dead links across multiple regional stores - U.S., Japan and South Africa. I’m not sure if this is a server issue or some problem with the version of Adobe Flash Player Media Go v1.8 uses.

I would like to see Sony make Media Go’s PS Store service browser-based so such issues can be resolved without having to download a new version of the software every time. With the PS Vita coming out later this year they need to up their game if they want to ensure that their portable device customers have the best possible PC-based content management options at their disposal.