Sony Intros Memory Stick Movies as Target KO's UMDs

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.gamespot.com/news/6154015.html?part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=6154015' target='_blank'>http://www.gamespot.com/news/6154015.html?part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=6154015</a><br /><br /></div><i>"After getting off to a strong start in the wake of the American PSP launch last March, the Universal Media Disc (UMD) appears to be on its last legs. Sales of movies on the PSP's once-hot proprietary format have slowed to a trickle, causing several major movie studios to cease supporting it. In March, the Hollywood Reporter ran an article claiming that the home-entertainment divisions of Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures have "completely stopped" releasing films on the format, and other studios have been cutting back their release slates. This week, speculation turned into reality when Target decided to discontinue stocking UMDs entirely. At virtually the same time, Sony announced the forthcoming release of a pair of Memory Stick Entertainment Packs (MSEP). The packages will come in 1GB (MSX-M1GSTEP) and 2GB (MEX-M2GSEP) Memory Stick Duos for about $60 and $100--the standard retail price for both items."</i><br /><br />While all us PSP owners have pretty much learned to convert DVDs to the PSP-compatible MPEG-4 files via third-party applications, it looks like Sony has officially learned that UMDs are a dead format and Memory Stick Duo, the PSP's storage format, is the one that will carry them through. I certainly don't think they expect us to drop $60-100 every time we want to watch a DVD so I am guessing they will also be a special movie store soon enough. There is some talk in this article about automatic unlocking of the MPEG-4 files as well as conversion of file formats, but I think I am going to wait to see what other customers' experiences are before dropping that much money on the memory cards.

[Phoenix]

Although the average person won't mess with with ripping and converting a DVD to a PSP friendly format but would rather just buy the movie in the name of ease, and although I own some UMD movies myself (not many, though), I can't say that this surprises me.

Of course I don't think a person should say that UMD in general has failed. All of the PSP's games come on UMD, too. It's just that it's failed as a movie format. Maybe they would have succeeded more if the movies were priced in the $5-$10 range. Or maybe not.

But placing movies on memory stick isn't going to sway anybody. This will be another failure for Sony.

Sony just needs to encode the movies themselves and allow people to simply download them. But not just a PSP version would do. They'd also need a version that will scale and play on computer and TV screens. But that won't happen with Bluray coming out.

It seems most of Sony's proprietary formats have just hit the floor. Seven of them (and who knows, maybe more)...

Let's see... Betamax, MiniDisc (yes it was fine in Japan for awhile, but no more, and it failed worldwide), HiFD, SACD, ATRAC, MicroMV, UMD movies... And who knows? Maybe Bluray will be next on this list. And let's not pretend that MemoryStick is a huge success either, although it has managed to hold on.

I think the last time Sony developed a successful format all on their own was back in the early 80's with the 3.5" floppy disc and the Video8 format for videorecorders. That's a long time - 20 years - since they've come up with anything good on their own.

Sony seems to do best when they're co-developing with other companies. When they worked with Philips, the CD was born. And the last time they agreed to work with Toshiba, they adopted most of what Tohsiba came up with to help invent the DVD as we know it. (Too bad they decided not to work with Toshiba again with the HiDef DVD's).

Sony should learn from its past.

[BugDude10]

Is there some kind of corporate-stupidity-Olympics going on right now that we're not aware of? :roll: