UMD Sales Picking Up Steam

After what some deemed a slow start, Sony is now claiming that they've sold slightly more than 17 Million UMDs since the launch of the PSP. 9 Million of these discs have been games, with just over 8 Million UMD movies. From the article: "Current manufacturing lines are stretched to the max - Bob Hurley, with Sony DADC, says that Sony is churning out 200,000 UMDs a day and future capacity is expected to be 500,000 per day. 'Tiger Woods Golf is my personal favorite [game], but video has been surprisingly good to us,' says Hurley. In a few years Sony expect videos to be more than 60 percent of all UMD sales, with an expected 130 million UMDs being sold in 2008."

Comments

huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd really think Valve would have an annoucement about this on their site somewhere...

Sales by territory?

[metallicagoaltender]

I'd be curious to see the sales numbers broken out by territory, especially the movies. Are UMD movies selling well in America, or has Japan been helping those numbers?
 
Considering no one I know has been the least bit interested in movies, despite enjoying the PSP, I'm honestly surprised with those figures...

Re:Sales by territory?

[MBraynard]

Little anti-PSP comment here, but bare with me -

The reason so many vids have sold is that people who shelled out $$ need something to justify all that $$ they shelled out for something that has only retread games - so they buy a video.

And yeah, I know what I have in my sig, but I already got the Xbox and Ipod free, so why not.

I guess there's simply no limit

[BlackCobra43]

to human stupidity.

movies I can't play anywhere other than on my tiny PSP screen, for more than a DVD? SIGN ME UP!

Seriously, I doubt UMDs will account for 60%, as the novelty of this format will soon wear off. (one can hope, anyway...)

Re:I guess there's simply no limit

[supabeast!]

" Who is buying these? I think it has to be the novelty factor that's propelling sales."

Parents looking to keep their kids quiet. Give the kid a new movie and let him wander off, watch it, and shut up.

Re:I guess there's simply no limit

[buffer-overflowed]

Or they're reporting units shipped to retailers. Sony generally does that.

Re:I guess there's simply no limit

[ArsonSmith]

There's even videos playing when I stand in line at the convenience store.

I know, you know what's weird though? I was once in a convenience store and the show that was playing was about someone, who looked a lot like me, shopping at a convenience store. Must have been from the 50s or 60s because it was black and white. It was quite the coincidence though.

Re:I guess there's simply no limit

[Gogo0]

The PSP screen is too big and sexy to use it as a 'shut up kids' tool.

Any parent who lets their kids even touch a PSP shouldnt own one or the other.

no surprize

[Turn-X Alphonse]

UMDs seem to majorly outnumber games. You can't buy what isn't there.

American pride

[PenguinCandidate]

Gotta give to the American gaming public, they love slick marketing so much they went out and bought something they probably already had in their collections and then bought some $30 UMD movies to go on top of it. I'll just continue to watch my $17 DVDs on my wireless laptop and listen to my iPod and save myself the $250 until Sony stops porting year-old PS2 games to the PSP. I recently saw an article lambasting the gaming industry for lack of innovation... but I'm starting to think the blame for all this vanilla is being put in the wrong place.

Already got porn, thank you very much

[tepples]

wildly optimistic. or they're going to bring out some porno umd's.

Already got those, arigatou gozaimasu.

Re:Slightly off-topic, but still relevant

[ivan256]

I wonder if Sony figured out how bad it looked to have 150 unsold PSPs in the case at every walmart the day after release and only shipped enough to cause an artificial shortage...

I wouldn't put it past them.

Is that including the bundled UMD?

[JaseOne]

"9 Million of these discs have been games, with just over 8 Million UMD movies"

How many of those were the bundled Spiderman 2?

Now do those figures mean consumers ahve purchased 9 million or that retailers have purchased 9 million and they are just sitting on their shelves? Sales figures like that have always confused me as it is hard to see how they could quickly & easily track actual consumer sales.

The real question is....

[ZosX]

Are these actual retail sales or simply product that Sony has sold to retailers. The number seems awfully high and it makes me wonder what percentage of the UMDs are sitting on store shelves right now versus how many have actually sold.

The whole things smells of how to lie with statistics.

Re:Slightly off-topic, but still relevant

[RogueyWon]

This is very true. I've got a fairly substantial train commute myself. I've always seen a lot of Gameboys and GBAs (particularly the SP) on the train. However, a fortnight after the DS launch, all the DSes had vanished and the GBAs had come back. Having tried using my own DS on the train, I can see why; the stylus is an absolute pain in the arse to use in an environment that's rattling and shaking a lot. With the video-from-memory-stick capabilities, I'd expect to see the PSP being a huge hit with the (fairly affluent) commuter crowd. I've been using mine to watch movies, TV shows etc on the train for months now, with a lot of jealous glares.

Why buy them

[PktLoss]

I own a PSP, and have since around their NA launch, I've never even considered buying a UMD movie. Why pay the same price as a DVD (that plays on my PC, Laptop & Television, and can be encoded to fit on my memory stick for the PSP) for a lower quality disc I can only use on one device?.

Now, if they sold DVD & UMD combo packs for like $3-$5CDN above the DVD only price, they might hook me in. But even then, the prices on portable DVD players are comming down so fast why bother? I've already got 100+ DVDs, buying one of those (while adding bulk to my tech bag) would make more sense.

Double cross

[Apreche]

SONY comes out and markets the PSP as to compete with the DS. The DS basically won with Nintendogs and Advance Wars. With Mario Kart on the horizon hope is lost.

But wait, what's this? By selling UMDs they switched markets! PSP vs. video iPod, stay tuned.

Re:Double cross

[oGMo]

SONY comes out and markets the PSP as to compete with the DS.

Not really. It's more like Sony announced a next-gen handheld, and Nintendo tried to counter with the DS. Sony specifically doesn't consider the DS a competitor: nor should they. The GBA, perhaps, but more as a "reigning handheld champion vs the next generation" rather than on features.

The DS basically won with Nintendogs and Advance Wars.

This is laughable, and insulting to Nintendo. They will forever dominate this generation based on an advanced tamagotchi and a strategy game that just came out? I should hope they have something better in their lineup. People buy these games for one reason: it's the only thing they can get.

With Mario Kart on the horizon hope is lost.

I find this amusing. The PSP has had similar stuff since launch, like Wipeout Pure and Twisted Metal (both excellent games).

But wait, what's this? By selling UMDs they switched markets! PSP vs. video iPod, stay tuned.

Actually, selling it as a device that also plays movies and music was a goal from the beginning.

The NDS has some redeeming qualities and (hopefully) will have some system-sellers for it. Being a starry-eyed fanboy, however, just makes you, the DS, and Nintendo look silly. The PSP hasn't even seen its first Christmas yet; saying it has "lost" is laughable, especially with the numbers of people I saw playing it at PAX.

If I were you, I'd be rooting for both consoles. Competition in the market has always done the market good: more games, better games, cheaper games.

Re:Double cross

[bleaknik]

There a few things I'd like to point out.

First, Nintendogs and Advance Wars are great games. Do not discard them because they aren't targetted to you. I don't understand it, but my niece and all of her friends want Nintendogs this year. And Advance Wars... My cousin has loved the series since inception. Just because the game isn't oGMo friendly, doesn't mean they're lousy games. People buy them because they want them.

Comparing Twisted Metal and Wipeout to Mario Kart isn't even fair. I love all three, but Twisted Metal is not Mario Kart. They are very different experiences, and each is fulfilling in it's own way.

I agree with you, though. The PSP has not seen it's first Christmas, and it's not yet "lost" the handheld war.

However, the problem with your analysis is this: the PSP is not in direct competition with the Nintendo DS. The PSP is selling the "adult" games... the Twisted Metals, the Wipeouts, and the (coming soon) GTAs. The DS, however is focusing on something entirely different; it is trying to attract a new crowd of gamers... types like the girlfriends, the less "hardcore" gamers, or the extremely casual gamer.

The PSP is instead more directly competing with the GBA, although you have a point that it's more "last gen vs. next gen" here. I guess we'll just have to wait and see... Nintendo claims the true succesor to the GBA line is still to come.

/shrug.

Re:Slightly off-topic, but still relevant

[falcon5768]

Sony historically undersupplys stores so that it doesnt look bad that PSPs are just sitting there. I know around here after the first week where you couldnt get it anywhere, the things just sat on the shelves unsold and remain so while the DS vastly outsells it thanks to the sheer amount of fun games in comparison to Sonys rehashes of older (and in most cases still sucky the second time around) games. The DS might not be as powerful as the PSP, but just like Sony is able to kick Nintendos ass with the PS2s library, the DS with its own library and its compatibility with the Advance has managed to kick Sonys ass the exact same way with the DS.

UMDs stink, people buy them.

[MBCook]

I've been thinking about this. The idea of buying UMD movies seems stupid to me as it does to nearly every slashdotter. So why do people buy them? I think we are all missing one key point.

Who are we? I'm 22, most of us are adults. We often have laptops, or portable DVD players to watch movies on. We buy our own things.

Who is buying the PSP movies? I think the answer is obvious: not us. So who is doing it? Moms! There are lots of kids out there with PSPs (despite Sony targeting it as the Adult handheld). Buying UMD movies makes some sense. You can get something that you kid will watch in the car on the way to/from school, sitting at the doctor's office, etc. It runs on something they already have so you don't have to buy (and they don't have to carry around) a portable DVD player. Most cars don't have DVD players. And most kids don't have laptops to play DVDs on. For a kid, it does make some sense.

I think this is where all the movie sales are going. I don't think I've ever seen an adult interested in them, but I've seen many kids at stores looking at those movies. I can see why they'd want it (I would have when I was 10 if I liked more movies they sold).

I'd like to see the sales broken down by age range of the person the movie was bought for. THAT would be the interesting information (although sales by territory as another commenter suggested would be interesting too).

Re:Slightly off-topic, but still relevant

[RogueyWon]

FUD...

Seriously, why does slashdot tolerate so much FUD regarding the PSP? Is it seriously so threatening to have a decent competitor to Nintendo on the handheld market?

My daily round-trip commute, until fairly recently, was just over 3 hours. When the trains were broken, which in this country is a pretty regular occurence, I could spend up to 5, even 6 hours a day on the train. Not once, in all this time, did I get so much as a low battery warning from my PSP, whether I'd been watching stuff from the memory stick, from a UMD movie disk, or playing a game. The *only* game I have in which loading times are even noticable to any significant extent is Untold Legends, which is an RPG and a fairly heavyweight undertaking for any handheld. Lumines, Wipeout, Ridge-Racer, Metal Gear Acid, Mercury and Death Jr. all have very, very quick loading times, with several minutes play at the very least between each load.

Re:Slightly off-topic, but still relevant

[LordVader717]

I live in Europe and passed by the main retailer in my area today and saw an intersting thing.

Where up until yesterday there was a shelf full of plastic boxes representing preorder-PSPs, there were a line of GranTourismo-PStwo bundles, and above literally hundreds of UMDs.

The only systems I saw were 4 boxes lodged between the PS2s and another huge pile of UMDs.

I'll check out the situation again maybe tomorrow, but if Sony give main retailers, like maybe ten PSPs it's no wonder they're sold out.