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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.'"
At least Betamax had some technical reasons for people to consider it better than VHS. UMDs cost the same as (or more than) DVDs, with less resolution.
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"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Seriously. The PSP is niche at best, and the media price isn't all that cheap, I imagine. Add in the fact that the UMD flicks were rather pricey at retail, and you get a flop.
I'm surprised that the studios actually did release movies on UMD. I'd have waited to see how that whole PSP market panned out first.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
well stone the crows... the format was effectively dead, in that it required you to have a PSP... whereas you could go out and purchase a portable DVD player that took your existing disks for a fraction of the cost of a PSP... the only people who were in the market for UMD then were those few PSP owners who were stupid, or else didn't have an existing DVD player and TV to watch them on...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I think studios saw sales spikes from novelty purchases ("Hey, my PSP can play movies! I should try one") and quickly flooded the market with the same kind of crap they were able to sell at the begining of the DVD market. But no one wants to rebuild their catalogs on UMD like they did on DVD. I think there really is a UMD movie market, but assuming it's a duplicate of the DVD market is probably a bad idea.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
A proprietary format that is similar in price to a DVD but (I'm assuming) a fraction of the resolution is failing. Mean while, you can purchase the full resolution DVD, Buy a Memory Stick (which aren't terribly priced now as I rexcall), and convert the movie to a PSP format and put it on the stick. I for one am not surprised. With the push for GPU companies to support hardware encoding, the conversion time may eventually not even be a problem for those that do go this route.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
The problem with the UMD adoption has been the freaking price! I am not going to pay $20-$30 for a UMD movie when I can pay $15 for the DVD and rip it to my memory stick.
The approach they should have taken would be to bunlde the UMD with the DVD for an extra $5. When you buy the movie, you have paid for the rights to view it privately. The UMD is just another piece of $5 media.
Oh well, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.
~.Evanrude
Here's what could've made the PSP *the* device to own: the ability to burn your own UMDs with photos or videos or whatever without the need for any proprietary hardware or software. A disc-based, portable image/video sharing device -- properly marketed and with proper competition from other companies -- could have created a new "must have" device that would be almost as ubiquitous as cell phones.
This mega-corps are gonna have to stop thinking about what they want (expensive, proprietary, restricted devices) and start thinking about what consumers want (afforable, open, and easy-to-use devices), or else I will continue to write angry rants!
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Sony probably did sell eight million UMD discs - to retailers all over the world, who still have them collecting dust andare now either going to dump them below cost just to get shelf space back, or, if they have the clout to do so, send them right back to Sony.