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UMD Sales Top 100K
GamesIndustry.biz has the news that Sony has sold more than 100,000 units of UMD movies to date. This does not include the Spider-Man 2 discs that were included with the PSP package in the U.S. From the article: "Sony's film canon is broadening all the time, the executive said, with releases aimed at demographics outside the traditional 18-25 year-old male gamer demographic expected soon - including releases targeted at women, and cartoons."
Video out on the PSP would look hideous on a big screen. 480x272 is the resolution of the screen, while DVDs are 720x480. DVDs are already noticibially lower quality then true HD content on a 1280x720(720p) or 1920x1080(1080i/p) display.
Universal means it can hold music, or video, or game data according to Sony. It could be an odd translation issue, but it does lead to some highly ironic things.
At least Best Buy is somewhat smart. UMD movies on their shelves were priced at $30 initially. They just recently dropped them to $20. I still won't buy one, and will instead cheer on the firmware hackers and hope one of them enables 480x272 and H.264 off the memory stick. Right now the memory stick is limited to 320x240 and Mpeg4. This is why UMD media looks so much better on a PSP, all due to a firmware limitation and no technical reason.
100,000 units is almost irrelevant if you actually analyze the numbers. The PSP has sold (to end users) more than 5 million units world wide(I don't know the exact number though); now if you look at the numbers this means that less than 2% of PSP users have bought a movie for it. Now if you assume that a large portion of people who have bought 1 UMD movie will have bought 2 or more it means that less than 1% of PSP users have bought a movie.
I don't know about you, but if I was a movie studio I wouldn't be considering releasing my movie through a format which effectively has ~50,000 potential buyers and, at most, may get to 500,000 potential buyers.
But why should I buy a movie for $20 (and that is generously low for some movies) and they buy it again for... $20 so I can watch it on the go?
I'm not big on buying movies in the first place, but I think most people would see that as a rip-off.
How about $15 dollar rebate if you can prove you own the DVD version or something like that?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Actually UMD video is recorded at a resolution higher than PSPs LCD screen
The wording on the post is misleading and or perhaps the article is wrong. I was just looking into UMD sales figures the other day and Resident Evil 2 & House of Flying Daggers have -EACH- sold over 100,000 copies themselves.
I'm not sure about the total numbers, but the news is that two titles have reached the 100,000 mark after 5 months or so on the market. Air Force One with the first DVD to sell 100,000 units, and that took -9 months-.
On a somewhat related note...
I believe this illustrates how Blu-Ray included with the PS3 will defeat HD-DVD. No one in their right mind would buy a "UMD player" but by virtue of it being included with the PSP, the sales are relatively soaring. All the studios (except Warner Bros) have abandoned the Warner Bros. mini-DVD in favor of the UMD, and I think the same will happen with Blu-Ray/PS3 v. HD-DVD. Blu-Ray will get fast and massive market penetration riding the coat tails of the PS3, while HD-DVD has to fend for itself solely on its own merits.
I think everyone expected legal movie playback on a proprietary PSP only disk that cost more than the available DVD to be a complete red herring. It was just a lure to get suckers to buy into the portable gaming machine, and was never supposed to sell at all. That they sold more than 0 movies is a surprise. That they found 100,000 suckers is a triumph.
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