Last week the PS Blog mentioned that Adhoc Party was finally coming to the USA, and IGN notes they’ve gotten a press release that says this Thursday the 19th is the big day for its release. This is very welcome news, and Capcom immediately blurted out a very hastily written email right after Friday’s announcement that couldn’t contain their excitement at never having to add online modes to their PSP games:

Did you hear the news? Sony’s Ad-hoc Party feature for the PSP is coming to North America this month! This awesome new service allows you to play Monster Hunter Freedom Unite ONLINE by enabling your PSP to play through your PS3. This is HUGE news for Monster Hunter fans as now they can play MHFU with their Monster Hunter buddies around the country! The new feature also allows you to use text or voice chat to communicate with friends, which is critical for coordinating those 4 player hunts and taking out those tougher Monsters.

Granted that Adhoc Party will actually bring lots and lots of OLD PSP games online, going back literally years with no patching needed, but it’s also letting developers off the hook to a certain extent. Keep in mind that your PS3 will have to be dedicated to this to work — no DVD, Blu-ray or Netflix use by someone else in your household while you’re online with the PSP — and that you need a hard-line ethernet connection to it so the PSP can talk to it via the built-in Wi-Fi chipset. It’s a great deal for existing PS3 owners at zero dollars and zero cents and no ongoing online service fee.

All of that said, the technical triumphs of things like the two excellent Syphon Filter PSP games from the Sony Bend Studio that included not just online play for a first-person shooter but also had voice chat proved years ago that it could be done, and done well, without having to fall back to another service. Yes, this is just like having Xbox Live to fall back on if you think about it, and yes, this might help boost sales, but there are side benefits to running your own servers.

Take Sega and what they’re planning for Phantasy Star Portable 2. The first game was adhoc only, but the sequel is adding online play. Why is this a big deal? Why not just use Adhoc Party? Maybe because they might use it to reduce used game sales by requiring you enter a code from your manual into the game to register it with their servers before you can play it online.

In the end, though, I can’t help but think this is a net positive for the little handheld that is still alive and kicking up against Nintendo’s incredible DS juggernaut. What older games do you have that you want to play online?