In whatmust have seemed obvious to most, a umd movie that costs $5 more than the dvd will eventually no longer sell. It seems the novelty of umd movie has worn off. SOURCE gameindustry.biz Movie studios cut back on UMD releases Ellie Gibson 09:51 17/02/2006 PSP to TV adapter on the way? A Sony spokesperson has told GamesIndustry.biz that UMD movie titles are still selling well - despite reports that home entertainment companies are disappointed with the format's performance so far. According to Hollywood trade paper Variety, UMD sales figures are falling well below expectations - leading Sony Pictures, Paramount and Warner Bros. to rethink their planned release schedules. Variety claims that Sony is planning to reduce the number of new releases it puts on the shelves, opting instead to concentrate on expanding the library of comedy content available with Monty Python films and Not Another Teen Movie. Apparently comedy is the most popular genre amongst PSP owners - Napoleon Dynamite has proved to be the best-selling UMD release so far. Paramount has seen Chappelle's Show and Beavis & Butthead sell well, but the company does not plan to release any more titles in the next few months. A spokesperson said that Paramount will consider releasing "select films" on UMD in the future. Warner Home Video has gone even further, cancelling the release of six PSP titles and stating that sales so far have been disappointing. "We are re-evaluating our position on any future releases at this time," Warner executive Jeff Baker told Variety. "We're looking at this on a case-by-case basis. We're disappointed with consumer demand at this time." Retailers are also said to be less than happy with the performance of the UMD format, with Virgin buyer Chris Anstey describing demand for the titles as "modest." "We have been encouraged by the results of a couple successful campaigns that we've featured to help promote them, but the overall impact of the format has still been nominal," he said. However, speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, a spokesperson for Sony Computer Entertainment said: "UMD movie sales are still successful and we are looking at new ways to cross-promote future titles for 2006." The Variety article also claims that "SPHE and sister unit Sony Computer Electronics America, which sells the PSP, are touting a new adapter that would allow a user to watch a PSP pic on a TV." Sony Pictures' Ben Feingold is quoted as saying: "It would be a huge boost to [PSP movies] if we can arrange for the disc to play on TV players." The Sony spokesperson declined to comment, stating only: "I have no official confirmation on such an adapter.
I wouldnt go as far as saying this is the end of UMD movie format, but very selective titles might be brought over. Granted of anime was to be sold via UMD im sure sales would be alot higher, then what they are now.
Who is going to buy UMD when you can just get the dvd, rip it and stick it on your memory card anyway? So you make a device that can play umd on tv, why not just get the dvd? I think it should only be used as a budget format imho, it is nice to get extras on umd or free umd as part of dvd promotions. But given the choice I don't think anyone would choose umd over dvd. As for anime on umd, even in Japan I have noticed that less and less series are coming out on umd than say a couple of months ago. I personally never thought of umd as a valid feature film play back medium. It was always a bonus psp function for me. Although the quality of umd videos has always impressed me, especially in comparison to when coming off the memory stick. It is always nice to see anime looking as sharp as it was meant to be.
Good. I hate sony's arogance at throwing stupid and useless format at consumers. they think they can dominate everything and everyone with bad products, ha. Let's hope it will serve as a good leason.
In a somewhat releated note, the company who actually makes the UMD's in america is looking to file for chapter 11. No official source on that, if you know what i mean....
Friend: I want a PSP so I can watch movies where ever I go Me: That's why they make portable DVD players Friend: Too expensive Me: They're only about $99. A PSP is $250. Not to mention UMD movies run you about $30. You can get DVDs for $5-$20. Friend: Well....it doesn't play games Me: So you're willing to spend an extra $150 on the device and an extra 10-15 dollars on a movie just so you could play some games? The games themselves are about $40-50. Friend: I can listen to my music and have pictures on there Me: 1 gig is hardly enough space for a good amount of music. What's the point of it having pictures? That serves no real purpose but just showing them off. No real gain there. Just save your $. I learned the hard way that PSP is a rip (in my eyes). I would get a DS, BUT I'm still uncertain.
They mention a way to play UMDs on regular TV. Um thats about 8 months too late IMHO. If there was a way to use UMD's (no thank you, to the PSP TV stuff) on TV's, when I had my PSP I would have actully bought a few. I was looking at numbers for PSP's and DS's, I think both were shipped numbers not sold numbers. DS was like 14 million and PSP was like 4 million. Considering you can't sell a kidney for a DS in Japan I'd wager 10-12 million sold DS's. It's so ironic, I was so pleased with the PSP launch compared to the DS's but its been horrible from that point forward gamewise. Once the "awesome" factor wears off on the PSP it just never comes back. *Edit* Appears that 14 million is sold DS's. PSP is getting mopped up.
im not talking about the psp, im talking about all those proprietary storage mediums sony made in the past, present and future. MDs, Memory sticks, UMDs, , ect. Most of these products are superficial, and useless.There's better products arleady existing on the market that fullfills their jobs, but sony created them nonetheless for only one reason: Restraining the consumer into buying sony-only products to fit with other sony products. And that's what i hate, its such an arrogance. New storage mediums should be created to fill an hole, to expend the possibilities, not restraining consumers.
There actually was/is a reasonably impressive anime lineup for UMD, considering how new it is. I'm not sure of the full extent, but I've seen Akira, Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell, and Appleseed. Granted, those are some pretty classic films that almost every anime buff has seen before, but I'd imagine they would be some sort of indicator as to the viability of selling whole series on UMD.
Cahaz, while I agree that minidisc certainly does fall in line with Sony's proprietary format pushing ways, if you've ever owned an MD player, I think you'd agree that it was a fabulous format that in my opinion *STILL* isn't surpassed by any portable audio format. Even the MP3 players that allow for direct MP3 encoding aren't as anywhere near as flexible as MDs as far as editing and moving stuff. I have two good MP3 players including one hard drive player that encodes MP3 on the fly, but I still use my MD player all the time. If the quality of Sony's products in recent years hadn't dropped so far below it's already low standard I'd prefer a Hi-MD player (the newer ones that play MP3 format directly, so that you don't need to use SonicStage) to anything else on the market for pure audio uses. Though I really like having all the extra features of the nicer MP3 players like text readers and jpg viewing (yes, the stuff that toubabokoomi was mocking). ...word is bondage...
I must concure, i seen it coming, at 5 to 10 dollars more than standard dvd's amd hard;y any extra features, im surprised it ever caught on to begin with...then again charging $25 for terminator 2 on umd..when i could buy it for 10 on dvd Well, with luck, the excess stock at the local walmart will clear out for 5 bucks Ryan
Nobody knows about minidiscs because they never owned one. The older ones were great quality products. I once dropped on from shoulder height on asphalt while running and it still works to this day. MD's could record high quality sound with an external mic and at one time sony had a camcorder that recorded on minidiscs. Its too bad sony just didn't stick with minidisc as its ONLY propritary format. The design can play and record movies, record music and data. It could have been UMD's, memorystick and microMV all in one format. It was a bad move by sony to abandon MD's for use in all thier products. Consumers just get frustrated and confused when stuff is purposely crippled and frequemtly replaced by new formats. MD's have been crippled far beyond thier full ability from day one and now we will never see the full potential.
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. It's really unfortunate that they created the UMD format instead of just using Hi-MDs in the PSP. If they had portable music players, camcorders and a media player/game machine (and they could have a nice home theater shelf unit, too) all using the same format it seems like that would open up all kinds of marketing possibilites and cross-product synergies and that sort of crap. Good profits all around and that's what it's all about, right Sony? Another thing Sony should have done was to introduce ATRAC3 as a digital audio format to compete with MP3 back in the day. I guess they've now finally done it, but it's way too late, they should have done it as soon as digital audio become feasible in computers. I mean standard ATRAC3 which has been around since like 1992 is roughly 128kps, but sounds *WAY* better than a 128kps MP3 and just about as good as OGG and AAC, in my opinion. If ATRAC3 had been around in the days when MP3 was catching on, it would have been a serious contender. And then MD players with PC connections for direct downloads of ATRAC3 formatted audio files could have come out long before any portable MP3 players were on the market. Once again, good profits all around. Of course, Sony never could have released ATRAC3 as a free codec, they would have tried to control its use, so it wouldn't have worked anyway. These days with the release of ATRAC3 as an independent format and Hi-MD players that can be used for data storage as well as audio, Sony is finally doing what they should have done all along. Way too late, though, I reckon. Have you seen their newest MD player, though? It has a camera built into it with a small color LCD screen. Cool move even though it's only 1.3MP. At least 3MP with camcorder function and they'd really be on to something. The player with the camera built in doesn't have the line- or mic-ins, though, so it lacks on of MD's biggest advantages! I'll never understand the decisions corporations make when they design their products. And more than often enough, Sony sure is among the worst. ...word is bondage...
The reason the PSP doesn't use MD's is due to internal Sony politics. Sony is almost literally split into different companies, the consumer electronics division wouldn't let the games division liscense the MD format. They were afraid the psp would cut into their own sales of the MD, they knew people would buy the psp and abandon the dedicated MD players. On top of that, the Sony music division has been trying to kill the MD format for years, they see it as a way to pirate live music... The internal politics at sony amaze me sometimes... I seriously doubt that the company will be around long term without a serious reorg.
I hear politics like this is what killed the psx from being what it was suppose to be and yaroze being dropped quickly. Sad thing is sony keeps shooting itself in the foot with formats. The psp allowed them to sell their obscure but expensive format mem stick pro duo instead of the sd card which is widely used, cheaper, and more convient. As for umd being slowed down, im not shocked. I dont understand why sony didn't look into the fact that people would use the mp4 features for movies instead of buying a umd. The other feautre which they should let go but are too worried is the homebrew. I am not even sure why they bothered to leave in the mem stick game option when they realized from the begining that it could be used for piracy. Sadly the changes in fomrat and tech have hurt the company badly with ipods taking the music market by storm.
My last MD player was garbage - the discs were durable as could be, though, and it sounded great while it lasted. I didn't think the UMDs would even make it this far. Who honestly wants to pay that much for a movie that you can cheaper in a more widely supported format? I'd rather watch a movie on a portable DVD player than something as small as the PSP (although the screen size is still pretty impressive).
Another reason why is see sony not taking MDs for the psp is that writables MD discs are sold. So, people could have used it to store music, images, videos, and the Memory sticks would have suffered from this because, remember, the psp is like a Memory stick Trojan Horse. Memory sticks sales have been boosted alot by the psp. Second, the psp would have been easier to hack with MDs than UMDs. And i imagine you would be able to burn psp isos way before psp's first birthday.
