First UMD Movie/Game Combo

Gamespot is reporting that, for the first time, Sony is selling a combo UMD movie/game disc. For about $40 you get three levels of Wipeout: Pure and the craptacular film "Stealth", which didn't even manage a 30% recoup on the film's budget. From the article: "On November 15, Sony will release the military sci-fi film Stealth, which slipped under most summer moviegoers' radar, on UMD. The portable version of the $130-million-budget, $31-million-grossing film will come with the first three levels of the best-selling PSP racing game Wipeout Pure. It will also feature a "Stealth" track not found in the regular version of the game, which will let players race as the advanced fighter jet from Stealth."

Comments

Reminds me of...

[Deltaspectre]

Van Helsing...

I popped that movie into my Xbox and up came a screen asking if I wanted to play the game or the movie

Re:I'm not sure what they're trying to accomplish.

[NanoGator]

"Promote the UMDs that no one wants, or sell a 3 level demo for half what the game would cost... either way, it's a shitty deal."

It really is a bummer that Sony didn't think this through a little more. They've got 1.8 gigs to play with here. They have enough space to encode both a PSP version and a TV version of a movie on any given UMD. They could even swing the extras etc. Then they could have included a video out on the PSP (or maybe a peripheral...) so that UMD movies could be played on it. Then they could have made a DVD/UMD combo player. That would have been kinda neat. You could buy UMDs INSTEAD of DVDs. Heck, I might have gone for that.

Oh well.

THIS is how you'd get me to buy a UMD Movie

[MBCook]

See, now THIS (if done right) would be how you'd get me to buy a UMD movie.

Note, not THIS movie.

But if I could buy Spiderman 2 and the Spiderman 2 game on one disc for $50 I would consider it over the $40 game. Or if I could buy a music game (something like Amplitude) and it had the music videos for all the tracks on the disc, I would be willing to pay more for that.

Now of course, they don't offer that. And licensed games basically are ALWAYS TERRIBLE. There are a handfull of exceptions (Spideman 1/2, for example), but by and large they are terrible. They'd still sell very well (those games always do, especially the ones for little kinds because the parents don't look into if the game is GOOD, it just matters that it has Spongebob).

The real problem is that the movie content takes up basically all the disc, so you'd need to ship it in a two disc package (one for the movie, and one for the game) which would just be an excuse to hike the price (but we have to make TWO discs!).

This could work well, especially if they could come up with some more creative uses, but based on this first effort it looks like it will be used to prop up failing movie properties with game demos. Hazaah.

So as long as you are making a glorified demo disc, how 'bout dropping the cruddy movie and selling a disc of 20 working demos of new games for $5 or $10? I am MUCH more likely to buy a game I've played (thus know the quality of) than one I haven't. Demos have done great things for many computer games (can you say Doom?). Now that we have the technology, I don't know why we don't see this more with video games. The DS and PSP can both do it (including wirelessly), and they game companies say they will do that, but they don't (at least not in the US, I hear the DS can get demos at various shops/kiosks and movies in Japan over wireless). I have broadband. Let me try a game if I want to? How does giving me a chance to get hooked hurt your bottom line?

Too bad so many of these companies aren't run by games, or anyone with half a clue. Bad movie + game demo = $60. Yeah right. More like this: bad movie + game demo = $5.

Re:I'm willing to bet

[superpulpsicle]

I went into Circuit City just today. They had a giant section at the store front selling just Stealth the DVD. I guess Hollywood is trying hard to make sure they recover the expense. Here comes the funny part.... not one box was missing on the shelf. Not one!

Re:UMD doomed to fail

[Winterblink]

There's quite a few people who buy UMDs for the portability of it, given they have purchased a PSP and wish to use the UMD movie feature instead of going out and buying a new device (portable dvd player). I've asked a few guys who work at stores that sell the movies, they're definitely not disappointed by the sales of them.