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Sony Says UMD Is Here To Stay
PlayStation Portable senior marketing manager John Koller spoke with the Pocket Gamer site about the much-maligned UMD format. The disc used in the PSP for both games and movies, few stores carry UMD movies any more. Just the same, says Koller, Sony supports it 100%. From the interview: "'UMD possesses many strengths, from size to form factor to portability,' he says. The same can easily be said of the UMD's cartridge counterpart on Nintendo DS. However, ease of UMD manufacturing is seen as a winning benefit. 'Duplication of UMDs is much easier, cheaper than cartridges,' Koller adds. 'We've really optimized time and cost by going with a disc-based format.' On the topic of UMD weaknesses, Koller is candid: 'There's no question the biggest weakness is related to porting games from other platforms. Publishers are concerned about the size of UMD because they can't cram a DVD game on to it.'"
"Sales in Japan, however, have been astronomical - in autumn of last year, UMD movies underwent a 1000 per cent jump in the region as a result of deep discounts by retailers." Well, yeah. That's an easy way to get sales. My local Circuit City blew their discs out fast when they were discontinued and marked down to $2 each. Last I knew, most movie distributors other then Sony had stopped releasing UMD movie titles due to poor sales. Sony just needs to let the format die, everyone else has.
Minidisk, Memory Stick, and now this. Sony seems to have its mind set on producing a medium that is more expensive than any of the competition, doesn't add anything significant feature-wise and is totally incompatibile with the rest of the world.
In one hand, this is kind of lock-in, buy ours, not the competitor's. In the other hand, the Memory Stick was a deciding factor in not picking a Sony when I was buying a camera...
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"I just don't understand why they even need to, are there any advantages that other formats don't (and wont) have?" Yes, it has one big advantage for Sony. They can collect fees on UMD discs. If another format is used, they don't get paid for it. It is all about them trying to push their proprietary format so they get extra income. It is the same reason they want Blu-ray to take off. Nothing is better then getting paid for simply controlling the underlying media format.
Every time I saw UMD movies, they were more expensive than the DVD version. This probably hurt sales of the PSP as well.
It's typical Sony. Make your own format and charge extra for it. They never learn.
They forgot to mention that's quite insufficient. Stores don't support it. Content producers (except Sony) don't support it.
And not to mention, consumers don't support it. Who'd pay almost the full price of a movie just to watch a downscaled version on his psp.
comparing it to DS cartridges is a bit odd for gaming too... you can't write to a UMD can you? (i don't own a psp so i don't know, i just thought it was the case)
a price standpoint umd is outright weird, movies three times the price of a normal dvd which are not copyable (face it even illegal dvd backups are the norm not the exception) from a technical standpoint a mixed bag, they finally added caddies to improve the lifespan, but they left out a hole the size of a finger, so the caddies are outright pointless. The medium itself is a nice extension to dvds, but since they are not writable they serve only one purpose, customer lock in! Besides that 2 gig sd cards are now somewhat 10 dollars or so, so even if sony would bring out writable umd drives, they would be bound to fail, the next medium which will go the way of the dodo will be dvds (and their rw incarnations), 4 gig memory cards soon will be in the pricerange of a no brainer!
The comments could be viewed in a number of ways.
I think the UMD, being a format exclusively used by the PSP, is a fine format. Not necessarily better than the DS' game cards, but with more storage, i can't complain.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
UMD possesses many strengths, from size to form factor to portability,
That's not many strengths; that's one. It's SMALL. Also, this attribute is not necessarily a strength. It could have many downsides too.
Allow me to add one more bullet:
Anyone have a guess about tomorrow's headline?...
Not only that. It's also rather small, its dimensions are less-than-huge, it fits inside a reasonably sized box, not much space is generally taken by these disks and you can put many of them in one standard shirt pocket. Not to mention it's engineered not to be very big and there are lots of objects that take much more space. Geez, know your product's strengths man.
"Sony says UMD is here to stay; consumers not buying it."
Easy to copy both to and from, great for homebrew & pirates, crap for content producers.
Can't charge through noise for the writers.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
That said, a UMD disc is just a minidisc (sans cover) using DVD technology rather than CD technology. It won't be long until BluMD is here folks!
Same deal. Actually, it was even heaps better than UMD. Great concept, way ahead of its time. A rewriteable, portable medium that could store heaps of data long before the advent of the DVD or the price landslide of the solid storage. Yet a desaster. Why?
The reasons are similar to UMD: Sony's attempt to corner the market, rely on vendor lock-in and a DRM system that made it unusable. It's a no-brainer that you cannot force the market to use your proprietary format that none but your own hardware can read. And that's what Sony is trying (again). There is only ONE SINGLE platform for UMD. The PSP. And, let's be honest here, PSP sales weren't that great to begin with. PSPs are also not really the primary platform for watching movies. Far from it. And I think it's safe to assume that you have to pay Sony if you want to release a movie in UMD format.
Could anyone, or everyone, with at least a hint of a background in business think of a reason why UMD fails?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The biggest fault is deciding to put a shrunk DVD drive into a handheld. Manufacturing may be easier for them, but the DS cartridges are selling a bajillion times more and there doesn't seem to be a problem keeping up there.
The problem with the PSP is that it tried too much to be as powerful as a home console. Most of it's games are therefore not seen as better than DS games, but as stripped down versions of home console games.
Why do people keep saying the UMD is small? It's not, its physical size is way bigger than it should be, for its storage capacity. You can get 2 gig SD cards dirt cheap already, which are smaller, technically hold more, more energy-efficient, and probably load faster, too.
It's a proprietary, unwieldy format (can't display UMD movies on a tv, can't get writers or blank ones), but it's also bulky compared to alternatives (hell, i'd rather carry USB sticks), and small storage compared to alternatives.
Well, since there is news that the latest PSP firmware already has a built-in ISO loader, I hope Sony would make the PSP to cache the UMD on the Memory Stick. And by cache, I mean rip/copy the whole UMD to the Memory Stick. I don't care if that copy will be locked on a parituclar PSP (you still have the original UMD anyway) as long as I can rung the game that I bought from the Memory Stick so that games would load faster and that my PSP would have longer battery life.
In the other hand, the Memory Stick was a deciding factor in not picking a Sony when I was buying a camera...
Add to the list the format of the battery. My first digital camera was a SONY. Two lessons learned.. Interchangable parts are a must. Otherwise you are required to overstock seldom used items.
One memory card and one battery is OK for the occasional shot of the kid but useless when taking in an auto show, wedding and reception, parade, etc. Either I had a full memory with lots of useless CF cards nearby, or a dead battery with lots of NiMH and alkaline batteries nearby also useless.
I have standardised as much as possible. Everything uses either CF or SD cards and AA or AAA batteries. I have enough of both to get the job done. For a big job, the cards get pulled out of the MP3 player, the GPS and the hand held computer. A 2 week vacation to Hawaii did not mean running out of supplies. When I ran out of batteries at the cultral center, I broke open some alkaline batteries and kept shooting. I was not held hostage to a propritory battery format. It's nice that my flashlight and camera share batteries.
The truth shall set you free!
Is this really even a story? As long as they continue to make and sell the PSP, the UMD disc is going to be made, too (note, we're not talking about UMD movies). Were you guys expecting them to suddenly release a PSP that uses a different format and is totally incompatible with all previous games out there? Didn't think so. So why is this a surprise?
This guy's the limit!
Pressing a UMD is probably far far cheaper than even write once SD cards. UMDs can probably be pressed, like most optical media, for pennies.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Yeah, UMD movies are here to stay. Stay on the shelves of the retailers, that is. There is no space on the market for a format that costs more than DVDs, has less content than DVDs, and can only be played on one single device that isn't selling particularly well.
Having said that, I will admit that I have actually bought about a dozen UMD movies. Many of the major retailers are or were getting rid of them, and it was possible to buy them for a few bucks. So I have a bunch of unwatched UMDs I can watch if I'm going on a longer train trip. The main issue with that is, of course, that watching UMDs drains the battery much faster than watching movies from the memory stick. On the other hand, they look better...
You can now get 2GB MicroSD cards, which are absoloutely tiny
And how much did that 2GB MicroSD card cost when the PSP came out? Oh wait, they didn't make them at the time. You could get a 1GB MicroSD card for about a hundred bucks, though. Why didn't they just use those instead? Comparing what's available now to the materials available when the PSP was being developed/introduced indicates that you don't quite understand how this "flow of time" thing works.
This guy's the limit!
The difference is - as you've implied - that Apple generally tries to solve a problem that has no open solution (there were no alternatives to AppleTalk or ADB, for example). Sony often just tries to control markets with its proprietary formats (there really was no need for Memory Sticks). Which is probably why Apple is changing, and Sony isn't: Technology has caught up with Apple, so they don't need to rely on proprietary formats anymore. Sony, on the other hand, still tries to control as many markets as it can.
Remember, they're universal! They can play in your PSP made by Sony, and also can play in...
um...
well, an entirely different PSP, also made by Sony!
Universal!
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
$500 is better than $600, but it will still buy me ten games for my Wii, or even more for my DS.
Of course, if they actually start releasing GOOD movies on Blu-Ray, instead of crappy back-catalog bombs, then I might actually buy one to watch movies. But as long as The Criterion Collection stays on DVD-ROM, no PS3 for me!
"Here to stay" : "We can't *give* the damn things away"
You realize there was always a $500 PS3, right? The problem with this price cut is that Sony didn't lower their bottom line, they just dropped the price of 40gb of extra hard drive space $100 and offered a new $600 SKU. Sure, you ARE getting 40gb of extra hard drive now, but how much more does this cost Sony? $5-10? This is called marketing. You're not really getting a price cut as much as you're being subjected to a marketing tactic.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."