Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The UMD and PSP Getting Off The Ground

Posted by Zonk on from the impulse-engines-full dept.

1up is running a piece examining Hollywood's relationship with Sony's UMD format. From the article: "Two UMD movies sold 100,000 units within two months. By contrast, one of the earliest DVD releases, Air Force One, took nine to achieve the same goal. DVD and ticket sales are on the decline, Hollywood needs a new source of revenue while they pick up the pieces, and PSP's handheld UMD format is turning into the glowing solution." Relatedly, Next Generation is running an article taking a look at the increasing quality of original games coming out for Sony's handheld. From the article: "After an embarrassingly slow start, the PSP has begun to find its niche with developers; likewise, Sony's internal studios and publishing division have gotten really adventuresome lately, with big and little games, both in tested genres and genres those games serve to test."

4 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Holywood FUD by Serapth · · Score: 4, Informative

    "DVD and ticket sales are on the decline, Hollywood needs a new source of revenue while they pick up the pieces"

    God I hate this little fact people like to bandy about. Tinsel town is not hurting in the slightest, here are yearly box office sales from the last half dozen or so years ( thanks to boxofficemojo.com ).
    2004 9.4 billion
    2003 9.1 billion
    2002 9.1 billion
    2001 8.4 billion
    2000 7.6 billion
    1999 7.4 billion
    1998 6.9 billion


    See... where I come from, when the number keeps going up and up, we dont call that shrinking... grrr.

  2. Re:Just say "no"... by apoc06 · · Score: 2, Informative

    the blockbusters here rent where i live umd movies and games. they have been renting them since at least as far back as may/june.

    also, you can rent them from www.gamefly.com and a few other places, if you are more a www.netflix.com person than a www.blockbuster.com person.

    as for playing them on a regular sized tv screen: http://www.pspupdates.com/2005/09/teamxtender-upda te.html there you go... its not the most elegant solution; it requires some weirdness with the faceplate. but its a proof of concept. also, when look at the link above, keep in mind that the video on the screen is distorted due to the fact that they are displaying 16:9 content on a 4:3 screen. if you set the psp to 'display: original', it would display properly.

  3. Re:PSP=Gamecube of the Handhelds. by oGMo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Let's face it people the PSP has a serious problem with games

    It does? Which problem would that be?

    this is the same problem you laughed at the Game Cube about, but you defend it now

    OK, presumably you mean "the lack of games for the GameCube". However, I have about as many PSP games now as I have bought over the entire life of the Cube. Perhaps you mean "games I like", which may be perfectly valid for you, but irrelevant for the rest of us. No one is forcing you to buy one, but there are tons of games others enjoy.

    Nintendo risked a bit with the 2 screens, but notice where they are? Notice they know how to use it. Nintendogs is genius. They tried something big, and it's worked. Sony can't have something like that, they don't have the capablities for it on this system.

    That's nice. You like Nintendogs. A lot of people don't have any interest in an oversized tamagotchi. I, for instance, would be more interested in Super Mario Bros, Castlevania, or Advance Wars.

    It's also a bit silly to assert you can't have a pet game for the PSP simply because you don't have two LCDs.

    It's the same with the Revolution, if Nintendo gets third party in and sees it's a great idea you'll see a shift in power. And they can likely do it. What they need to let out is numbers for the systems and get the dev kits out, I don't know if they have done either, but once that starts it could be something good. It's going to be hard, but let's be honest, if you think games are good now, your kidding yourself, all we are getting are games similar to what we've been seeing for the last 20 years. This might actually give us something different.

    Ah yes, if, if, if. If they do all the right things, and happen to generate the right interest, and things happen to fall their way, it'll be great! It's so simple! But it's not. Generalities are nice, but it's actually pulling through in the implementation of them that's difficult. It's easy for an armchair enthusiast to comment about what they'd do, especially when they know nothing about what it takes to actually accomplish it. You seem to think Nintendo is stupid, and that it's not trying to do these things. I'm sure the random advice of a slashdotter would help them immensely.

    The problem is PSP should stand for PS Ports. They might have GTA Liberty City Stories but they need more than one unique game to hold this system together and they failed that test so far.

    Oh? Which ports would you be referring to? Mercury? Lumines? Metal Gear: Acid? Untold Legends? Wipeout Pure? Twisted Metal: Hands On? Hotshots Golf? Ridge Racer? Yes, a few of these games are sequels or have related series. (But then, the DS does too, right? Yoshi? Mario? Metroid? Castlevania? Advance wars?) There are also a few direct ports: THUG2 and Ape Escape. But I can see why two ports mean the system should be called the "PS Ports".

    The only game I want for the PSP is Lumines and maybe Liberty City Stories. Where as the DS definatly has the games, and the backwards compatibility too.

    Ah, here's the confusion. "The only game I want." Well, guess what? You're not the only person in the world. Possibly not even the only gamer. The PSP lineup appeals to a lot of people.

    Also, the PSP doesn't really have something to be backward-compatible with, yet, but that is a nice feature of the DS. (Although why they elected to disallow multiplayer link games is boggling.)

    They should have allowed everyone to put their own apps on the system. Would Java have worked if they locked it down? Imagine if you can run anything on the PSP and enjoy programming for it? but of course Sony doesn't want freedom (remember they have a huge invested

    --

    Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage

  4. Re:Just say "no"... by Lisandro · · Score: 2, Informative

    It was. All of those drives don't let you deal with the MD-Audio media and MD-Data discs instead, which are quite more expensive and not cross-compatible. There's not a single consumer device that lets you read and write MD-Audio discs with your PC. NetMD players come close, but you're still tied to a hardware ATRAC3 encoding/decoding and propietary software/protocols.

          It's also interesting to see a link to an old PC World article comparing MiniDisc to Betamax... i guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.