UMD Production Decreased

Mr. Kennedy

Poor sales force movie production houses to cut back on PSP-formatted flicks; noncomedy genres are first to get canned.

When Sony released the PlayStation Portable last year, many industry watchers felt as though the movie-watching capabilities were limited by the handheld's proprietary format. The Universal Media Disc, many argued, would go the way of the Betamax and the Minidisc, formats both made by Sony that were eventually edged out of the market because of competition and their limited usage.

Would people pay money to buy movies that could only be viewed on the four-inch screen of the PSP? Out of the gate, the answer was surprisingly "yes." Seeing the format as a viable option for more revenue, many film studios, some reluctantly, jumped on the bandwagon and announced support for the format.

Now, it appears that many are hopping off as quickly as they got on. Paramount Home Entertainment, Warner Home Video, and yes, even Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, are cutting back on UMD releases because of poor sales, reports Variety.

Warner has cut six titles from its previously announced lineup, including Martin Scorsese's classic Goodfellas. Sony, realizing that comedy UMDs sell much better than action or horror UMDs, will be adding Not Another Teen Movie and Monty Python content to its lineup. Sony will also begin releasing movie bundles, selling a movie on DVD and UMD in one pack for just under $30.

An abundance of formats and piracy (DVDs can be ripped to larger memory sticks) are cited as likely causes for the falling demand, which right now nets about 40,000 to 50,000 units sold for the average release, according to Variety.

To hype demand for UMDs, Sony is said to be pushing an adapter that would let PSPs play UMDs on televisions.
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I'm not really too upset, I couldn't understand why people would choose to buy a UMD version of a movie over the DVD version. You can only watch it on the tiny PSP screen, and they don't contain any of the extras like commentaries or bonus features.

Visit and shop for video games at my Amazon-based store, also get discounted HD DVDs while they last.

airr233

I agree, I could never understand why people would buy UMD versions of movies when a DVD can be played on any machine. It might work if Sony put the UMD with a DVD in the new PS3 but I don't know if they are going to do that.

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Necro

These days you can buy a portable dvd player for like a 100 bucks... Might as well get dvds like you guys said...

Duke

i only bought one and that was resdident evil 2 because i wanted to see what was so cool about it. the graphics are awesome but not near worth it. i remember kill bill 2 for umd was 30 bux and the dvd was like 15....i never understood that one

Randy Orton

WC's Resident Alchoholic

i remember checkin out the prices of these in an EB once and they were ridiculous from what i remember.