GamerNode: News - Sony trying to resurrect UMD movie sales for PSP

Sony trying to resurrect UMD movie sales for PSP

Category: Sony PSP, Posted: 08/16/2008 at 08:03PM EDT by Frank Ling, Content Contributor

napoleon PSP When the PSP was launched, the games on it were made on an exclusive format invented by Sony; the Universal Media Disk otherwise known as the UMD.

While the format was good for games, the sales of movies on UMDs slowed to a halt and were finally dropped by many of the movie studios.

Two reasons were attributed to the failure of the UMD as a movie playback medium--cost and lack of content. UMD movies were retailing for up to $29 a piece and many PSP fans couldn't swallow the bitter price pill.

John Koller, director of hardware marketing at Sony said:

"The biggest issue with UMD was the lack of creating for a targeted [demographic]. When we first launched, it was a difficult sale. I don't think it's a big stretch to say that a 16-year-old doesn't have a lot of discretionary income. ... We were offering UMDs that were more expensive than DVDs at the time. And we want content that is in line with what the demo is asking for, action and comedy ... not romantic dramas."

To entice gamers back, Sony is offering new release movies at $9.99 to $14.99. This is a drop in price from the previous ones of $19.99 to $28.99, respectively, for new content. Sony is also trying to urge movie studios to come aboard the UMD ship by promising to take care of all the logistics of UMD sales such as licensing, manufacturing, and distribution.

[via dvdtown]

(10)

Posted by intooblivion on 08/16/2008 at 08:06PM

Will sony just give it up already umd sucks

Posted by NavMan on 08/16/2008 at 08:36PM

I wonder why they call it Universal Media Disk when its not very universal.

Posted by Collision on 08/16/2008 at 10:19PM

The idea is that it can hold any media making it universal.

But I still prefer to just copy movies from my comp to the psp, much easier and I can many on me at once.

Posted by Collision on 08/16/2008 at 10:27PM

a lot of stores lately have had a increase in sale of umd
that must be due to the increase psp sold.
hey what really is crap is the cartridge that needs to go the way of the dinosaur

Posted by Cobra951 on 08/17/2008 at 12:51AM

I'm not going to buy a movie for full DVD price, or anywhere near it, on a little disc that gives me lower quality and can only be played on a PSP's tiny screen. What I will do, and have done many times, is buy movies on DVD, then create MP4s from them, so I can watch them wherever I want, including the PSP.

Posted by Brendon on 08/17/2008 at 02:23PM

Lots of big retail chains are having clearance sales on UMDs to clear out stock.

Whoops.

Posted by Brendon on 08/17/2008 at 09:53PM

umd is okay but not the future
how a about a bluray umd it might make games ten times better
and all of the old umd worked on it to.

for the psp of course

Posted by sig220 on 08/18/2008 at 12:16AM

I just wish that they were made better. I have at least two movies that fresh out of the box were broken, and every time I wanted to watch them I had to carefully pop them in place.

Posted by sig220 on 08/20/2008 at 06:46AM

I'll pay that, at $10. - $15 USD I will gladly pay taht for a movie I really like and will want to watch over and over. I happen to like the UMD quality (movie viewing quality) as far as psp goes (just recently bought mine) but I am not a HDef TV owner and won't be since I am a disabled veteran at an extremely fixed income.

I have to agree about the super cheap cartridge,, the UMD cartri.. is a piece of cr*p plain and simple and it takes almost nothing at all to make these darn things fall apart. IN fact, the way most cases are designed that hold them, the cases themselves 'take apart' / seperate the edges of the case while [gently] trying to remove them.