Bye-bye PSP UMD movies?

PSP’s movie star dream in tatters.

Posted by Staff
That rare bird, Sci-Fi with a sense of humour
That rare bird, Sci-Fi with a sense of humour
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Bad news for Sony seeping out of La La Land today, with The Hollywood Reporter announcing that two major Hollywood studios, Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures, will not be releasing any more of their movies on UMD.

Major retailers are also considerably reducing the space they allocate for UMD discs. There is also a strong rumour that Wal-Mart will stop stocking UMD’s at some point very soon.

If UMD movies have any kind of a future, SPOnG feels that it is in providing movies to the niche audience of young adult, mostly male gamers. So expect to see Sci-Fi flicks and cult TV comedy UMDs still being produced. However, don’t expect to see many RomComs or historical documentaries.

It would seem that the studios are more focused on moving towards HD-DVD formats. And while PSP owners are able to buy DVD movies at a much lower price and rip them onto the PSP’s memory stick for portable viewing, there is increasingly less of an incentive to buy movies on UMD.

As one SPOnG staffer puts it: "whilst there is a minor noticeable difference in quality [in ripping DVD movies] it's still not enough to make me want to shell out more on buying UMDs. Plus I can't watch UMDs on the telly at home."

One exec quoted in the Reporter said, "No one's watching movies on PSP. It's a game player, period." Another studio source told them that, "Releasing titles on UMD is the exception rather than the rule. No one's even breaking even on them."

However, all is perhaps not dead on the UMD movie front. The Hollywood Reporter story concludes that, “...next week, Sony Computer Entertainment executives will begin making the rounds of the Hollywood studios to discuss plans for making the PSP able to connect to TV sets."
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Comments

majin dboy 31 Mar 2006 15:23
1/7
im kinda startin to feel sory for sony now.in relation to PSP VS DS anyway.
SPInGSPOnG 31 Mar 2006 15:47
2/7
Anyone who says there is a "noticeable difference in quality" between UMDs and ripped DVDs is clearly piss poor at ripping DVDs.

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Joji 31 Mar 2006 18:16
3/7
Feel sorry for them? Don't make me laugh. Don't forget their anti 2D stance crap. From day one when Sony said this was part of a gaming handheld I said it would never take off due to the popularity of DVD and home cinema set ups. They didn't think this decision out properly at all and now it blows up in their faces.

Kaboom!

Sony clearly forgot why they were in the games industry. Games were not enough for them and they got sloppy and greedy. I'll happily serve them some humble pie with scorn sauce, as long as they have a mouth to eat it.

Now they can perhaps concentrate on a making some damn games.
Funky 31 Mar 2006 21:52
4/7
Let's be serious - I have a DVD rack with about 50 movies on that I've amassed over the years. If I owned a PSP, why in the name of hell would I want to spend about £15 a time to buy all these movies again just so I can watch them on a bus? If they offered a download service for £3 a film or something like that, it would be great. But then who's gonna have a memory stick big enough to fit these movies on, since Sony bundle flash memory smaller than what's on a calculator with the base model.
OptimusP 1 Apr 2006 14:43
5/7
So... the UMD's don't sell as good as thaught... and the games are seling even more poorly... and they're selling those PSP's at a loss...and have 3.5 million unit lag on the DS in Japan alone...

Question remains...when is Sony going to pull the plug on this thing? This can't be good for their very delicate financial situation.
PreciousRoi 3 Apr 2006 07:24
6/7
One thing I noticed (over here in the States anyway) was that UMD was very rarely refferred to in advertisements...it was almost always "...availible now on DVD and PSP. Not sure what effect this had on things, could have helped by making it less confusing, could have emphasised the reality of the UMD as a media ghetto.

I'm not saying UMD was the latest Beta, Blu-ray certainly has the technical superiority to be, but its demise is not assured, except ultimately. If this and Blu-ray fail to persist as formats, won't Sony have a nice track record with new media formats...

Seriously though, the origami has infinitely more potential as a portable multimedia platform, simply because its going to be infinitly more flexible. E-books in .lit, .txt, .pdf, Word, etc. instead of a load of .jpgs (seen a downloadable e-book for PSP once...lol). Audio/Video in rainbow of formats/quality, including Flash. FINALLY I CAN CHECK OUT THE NEW STRONG BAD EMAIL WHILE I TAKE A CRAP!! WHEEE!!!
PreciousRoi 3 Apr 2006 07:40
7/7
Of course, there will inevitably be be a few annoying, if half-hearted attempts at Content Protection, but I think we can trust MS to either not try very hard, or leave gaping holes...then someone will run Linux on it.
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