The UMD format has received a lot of criticism from both the games industry and movie industry, however, Sony isn’t going to adandon the format so easily. This stand was recently echoed by PlayStation Portable Senior Marketing Manager John Koller as he reiterated the different strengths (and weaknesses) of the format.
“UMD possesses many strengths, from size to form factor to portability. Duplication of UMDs is much easier, cheaper than cartridges. We’ve really optimized time and cost by going with a disc-based format. UMD is a unique medium to create games and developers need to understand that when tackling the system.”
He added, “There’s no question the biggest weakness is related to porting games from other platforms. Publishers are concerned about the size of UMD because they can’t cram a DVD game on to it”.
Given all these, the marketing manager explained that Sony really believes in the format and is not going to drop it. Koller shared, “We’ll never walk away from our base. Whether it’s movies or game content, third parties have an incredible opportunity to utilize it. The future of UMD is bright”.
Ok so it’s “cheaper than cartridges” but the games still aren’t exactly cheap and the UMD haven’t been a flop due. A good example is the fact Amazon has slashed the prices of the UMD movies by about 75% presumably to get shot of them. It’s fair enough they’re not abandoning it just yet as that would just relegate the PSP to the same history as the Lynx or Gamegear, a couple of years of success & then dead
I agree. The UMD format is dead which is probably Sony has developed a ISO loader for the PSP. Who would pay £10 to watch a movie on a tiny screen? DVDs are cheaper than that, and better quality.