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UMD Format's Death Rattle Begins
Next Generation reports that Wal-mart is dumping the UMD format, because no one was buying movies with the media. Above and beyond that decision, the studios are unimpressed as well. From the article: "One unnamed president of a major studio is quoted as saying, 'No one's watching movies on PSP. It's a game player, period.' Universal Studios Home Entertainment has ceased UMD production. One exec told Reuters, 'Sales are near zilch. It's another Sony bomb.' Paramount is also considering its future with PSP's format. An exec said, 'We are on hiatus with UMD. Releasing titles on UMD is the exception rather than the rule. No one's even breaking even on them.'"
Also, for as much flack as Betamax still gets- people don;t seem to realize that Betamax later evolved into BetaCam and Digital BetaCam. Those 2 formats are still the standard for 95% of all profesional broadcasting (pre HD of course). Beta may have failed at the consumer level, but the technology paid back in spades in the pro market.
Remember, Sony reports "Units Shipped" (What THEY have sold to retailers), not "Units Sold" (How many the retailers have sold).
They probably weren't lying, per se, just misleading. Remember, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics...
Errr....this is about UMD movies, not the PSP. You can do everything you mention on a PSP now by using a memory stick instead of UMD. That's really the problem with UMD, I watch video on my PSP all the time but I do it from MS not UMD.
The PSP itself really isn't a failure - go read the article on 1up the other day, they say that in the US it's essentially level with the DS in sales. That's not bad for a market newcomer.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
This always disheartens me a little, and my response is usually just "Huh. Well, the PSP may be trailing the DS in total market share and trailing the GBA in day-to-day sales, and it may have a game library roughly as vibrant as the Jaguar, but I guess those UMD sales must be really popular. After all, if they weren't popular, why else would Wal-Mart be giving then so much well-placed shelf space?"
The obvious guess would be that Sony is paying for shelf space. It's a common arrangement in retail.
I live in NYC and commute via subway every day to work. I am surprised by the number of people who actually play a PSP, watch movies, and even listen to the music (the lame headphones give them away - the left side is shorter than the right). I personally just use it to listen to music because I'm a little wary of holding it out in the open to be snatched away. I wouldn't say I've seen as many people with a DS or Gameboy. Lots of iPods, obviously, and many cell phone gamers and crackberry addicts. But the PSP definitely has a nicer chunk of representation than the other handhelds.
As for the UMD movies, I'm not surprised myself either. I stayed away from them because they were more expensive than DVDs. I always thought that the best way to utilize the UMD movies is to rent, but Sony just didn't seem to get that. If Blockbuster had UMD movies to rent I'd be all over it for when I travel. Great idea, poor execution.
there was even a multi-load option to put 4 tapes in a stack and have it use them all while you were on vacation.
Which reminds me of the old technology adoption curve.
Early adopters want all kids of whiz bang features. Pragmatists are interested in far fewer features, and much more interested in cost. Late adopters are only interested in cost. You make the lion's share of your money with the pragmatists.
It follows that if somebody gets to the pragmatists before you do with a good enough, cheap enough product, you're heading into a dead end. In the case of UMD, I'd guess that format would be DVD; you can get portable players now for around $100, and once you have a handful of titles you're ahead of the game price wise, as the UMDs are more expensive, and you may end up buying DVDs of your favorite movies anyway.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That's called a cartridge, and they abandoned it in favor of the optical disc for a couple of reasons:
1) Optical discs hold more data.
2) They are far cheaper to make.
In doing so they sacrificed a few things:
1) Loading speed
2) Energy conservation
3) Durability of the read drive
I think of it this way: Sony had a certain set of priorities for the PSP.
1) PS2-esque graphics
2) Portable size
3) Games $50 or less
That could not be achieved with anything but a UMD-like optical disc. They would have to sacrifice graphics or price to use carts.
Was it a good idea? Depends on what your priorities are for gaming.
Why do we today use digi beta in the production environment if VHS was better? Beta evolved in the video production environment where VHS couldn't reach. Beta SP, Digi Beta, Beta-SX, HD-Cam. VHS digital is not bad but not as good.
plus the rasons you explain why vhs excelled were because of sonys poor choices, not because Beta couldn't do it. It could have been done but sony tried to hold on to there baby to long and ended up smothering it in that market.
I totally agree, although I don't particularly like your tone.
BUT, Beta is totally superior for professional-level recording. I work for a local TV company. We're in a rural enough era, and small enough that we still use Beta as our standard (sadly). Now, it kills me that we haven't gone to a digital format already, but if I had to use VHS, I would shoot myself. Now, we're using BetaCam, and I'm not sure the exact differences (I think the tapes are essentially the same, though the players/recording format is higher quality), but the quality level between Beta and VHS is no laughing matter, especially in my field. It isn't a small difference of quality, it's a fairly huge one, actually. Especially for audio, Beta runs VHS totally up the ass. In fact, before Alesis came out with the ADAT digital standard, Betas were the highest quality magnetic tape audio format. Not only that, but Sony created converters to use the visual track as another two audio tracks, allowing for four-channel recording... again, the ADAT replaced that, but only much later. On the video end of things, Betas are much more robust, they don't degrade nearly as quickly with use, their control tracks hold up surprisingly well, and the video quality is greatly superior. The other day, I had to record a VHS tape for a client, and my coworker and I were in awe of just how shitty it looked compared to Beta.Now, that said, Beta was totally the wrong choice for consumers, for just the reasons you stated. Probably the biggest one was the time issue, since most feature films are between 90mins and 120mins, Beta was incredibly inconvenient. I can't believe Sony's stupidity on that one. If you're going to release a new form of media, at least make it sufficiently large enough to hold the standard amount of data. If CDs had been released that only played 30mins of audio, noone would have switched from LPs.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
You're comparing apples to oranges.
Betamax failed in the marketplace, but Betacam did very well in the professional market. Note that these are VERY different technologies. Betamax battled VHS and lost, but Betacam competed against MII (the professional version of VHS) and won.
Sure, Betamax and Betacam may have the same sized tapes, but the video signals on them are very different.