Sony UK Boss Ray Maguire claims that the PSP UMD format is doing well, despite many retailers turning down the format due to low sales. Maguire claimes the company is “pretty pleased with UMD”. Many retailers claim that UMD sales are moderate, and only do well as part of cross-promotions.
Do you think the UMD format for movies is slowly dying? A survey we did over a year suggested that not many people bought UMDs since you could ‘rip’ movies onto a Memory Stick. What do you think?
[Via: EuroGamer]
LOL. I think the UMD is failing. The only UMD Movie I own is Spiderman 2, and I didn’t even pay for it!
I have bought several UMD’s used and a couple new. I think the format is doing poorly in the US and I hope that the prices drop to a reasonable level so that many can afford to buy them.
True. I think $15 – £20 is too much for a UMD that provides less quality than a DVD going fot just $10 – $15. If they want the format to sell, they need to make them cheaper than DVDs. Also, most UMDs don’t have any extra features which is also a loss!
The price is definately the weakness of the UMD, especially when you consider that there is an abundance of free programs available for ripping DVD’s to your PSP and that the DVD version is generally at least £5-10 cheaper.
If they got the major rental houses to rent them, that might have helped boost sales (atleast, then, we could pick up ‘used’ UMD video at Blockbuster for cheap).
I think UMD as anything other than proprietary game distro media is dying…