StarDestroyer.Net BBS

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Exactly a year after it was launched in the United States, the Sony PlayStation Portable's days as a hand-held movie-viewing device might be numbered.

Disappointing sales have slowed the flow of movies on the proprietary Universal Media Disc to a mere trickle. At least two major studios have completely stopped releasing movies on UMD, while others are either toying with the idea or drastically cutting back.

And retailers also are cutting the amount of shelf space they've been devoting to UMD movies, amid talk that Wal-Mart is about to dump the category entirely.

Wal-Mart representative Jolanda Stewart declined comment on reports that the retailer is getting out of the UMD business. But studio sources say such a move is imminent, and a check Wednesday of a Wal-Mart store in Santa Ana, Calif., revealed a drastic shrinkage of UMD inventory. Several shelves of movies in the PSP section were gone; all that remained were seven UMD titles sitting bookshelf-style on the top of the PSP section, with no prices or other information.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment has completely stopped producing UMD movies, according to executives who asked not to be identified by name. Said one high-ranking exec: "It's awful. Sales are near zilch. It's another Sony bomb -- like Blu-ray."

(Sony, in fact, vowed Wednesday to stick by the announced May 23 street date for the studio's first batch of Blu-ray Disc titles despite reports that the next-generation hardware needed to play the discs likely won't arrive in U.S. stores until the following month at the earliest.)

Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment also is said to be out of the UMD business. "We continue to evaluate the PSP platform for each title, and if it makes sense for business reasons and the target audience, we will release them," spokeswoman Brenda Ciccone said. "Our focus right now is much more aimed at HD (high-definition) at the moment, though."

A high-ranking executive was more blunt: "We are on hiatus with UMD," he said. "Releasing titles on UMD is the exception rather than the rule. No one's even breaking even on them."

Also out of the UMD business is Image Entertainment, while other studios -- including 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Buena Vista Home Entertainment -- have drastically slashed release schedules.

"No one's watching movies on PSP," said the president of one of the six major studios' home entertainment divisions. "It's a game player, period."

Observers speculate the studios released too many movies, too fast. Within five months of the PSP's March 2005 launch, 239 movie and TV titles already were either in the market or in the pipeline -- a significantly higher tally than games, according to the DVD Release Report.

But while sales were initially strong -- two Sony Pictures titles even crossed the 100,000-unit threshold after just two months -- the novelty quickly wore off, observers say. The arrival last fall of Apple's video iPod only hastened the PSP's decline as a movie-watching platform.

Benjamin Feingold, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, was a big believer in PSP as a movie-watching platform. He still is, even though he concedes retail shelf space for UMD movies is on a sharp decline and his own studio is being "more selective" in choosing movies for UMD release.

Feingold believes the PSP's biggest drawback as a movie-watching device was the inability to connect the gadget to TV sets for big-screen viewing, "which would have made it more compelling," as well as the inclusion of memory stick capability.

"I think a lot of people are ripping content and sticking it onto the device rather than purchasing," he said.

But next week, Sony Computer Entertainment executives will begin making the rounds of the Hollywood studios to discuss plans for making the PSP able to connect to TV sets.

"We're hoping the format's going to be reinvigorated with next-generation capability that may include living-room or normal television playback," he said.

Stark wrote:I just want to know why Sony keeps chasing the 'controlling standard' thing. *Especially* when things like MS, UMDs etc are more expensive than the other standards.

Laird wrote:Next the PSP will die.

Vendetta wrote:UMD was always going to be Minidisc II.

Always.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:

Laird wrote:Next the PSP will die.

Doesn't look that way when you actually take numbers into account.

Sharpshooter wrote:Well, color me surprised: a generally-inferior system-exclusive format trying to muscle in on a market that uses a superior widely-accepted format falls flat on its face. Nope, didn't see that one comin'.

Nephtys wrote:

Sharpshooter wrote:Well, color me surprised: a generally-inferior system-exclusive format trying to muscle in on a market that uses a superior widely-accepted format falls flat on its face. Nope, didn't see that one comin'.

Just a question. But um. What format are you talking about? UMD is a PSP only thing, and I don't know of any 'standard' portable video format that's not DVD. Which is too large.

TheBlackCat wrote:You mean the numbers where the DS has sold about 50% more than the PSP despite significant DS shortages? The numbers where there have been nearly three times as many DS games sold as PSP games?

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:

Laird wrote:Next the PSP will die.

Doesn't look that way when you actually take numbers into account.

Nephtys wrote:Just a question. But um. What format are you talking about? UMD is a PSP only thing, and I don't know of any 'standard' portable video format that's not DVD. Which is too large.

Sharpshooter wrote:

Nephtys wrote:Just a question. But um. What format are you talking about? UMD is a PSP only thing, and I don't know of any 'standard' portable video format that's not DVD. Which is too large.

DVD is what I'm talking about - DVDs have been in use and circulation long enough for them to become the general standard medium for data and visual-based entertainment storage. With their higher capacity, they have room for not only the movie but also the special goodies and extras that have become a staple of film DVDs, and can be used not only by stand-alone players but also by gaming consoles and PCs that have adopted the format due to the great advantages it gives - we even have portable versions of the players available with the display and speakers and such included. Meanwhile, the UMD has less capacity and is system-exclusive, and a good number of the products Sony's tried to sell on that format are already readily available on DVD with their bells and whistles, if not also at a lower price or can just be recorded to the sticks and played on the unit itself.

Rather than go with this UMD crap, if Sony was hell-bent on keeping the movie-player aspect of the PSP, an external dock of some kind could have probably worked better. Snap the PSP into the top of the frame, connect a few basic hook-ups, then pop a friendly regular DVD into the player and have the data routed to the PSP's display and speakers.