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.
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.”
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.
There’s no need to re-title DU as the “Latest Sony Flop” website. Sony provides that material on a regular basis, themselves.
I love these two quotes…
“Observers speculate the studios released too many movies, too fast.”
Can someone explain how releasing fewer movie titles could have increased sales?! Obviously if fewer movies were released, they’d blaime it on the lack of titles available. Why can’t they just admit that people don’t want to pay 20 bucks to watch a movie solely on a tiny screen! Maybe at 5 bucks a disc they could have sold a ton of them, but not when they cost more than the DVD version!
And of course there’s this quote from Mr. Obvious…
“I think a lot of people are ripping content and sticking it onto the device rather than purchasing”
You think?!
Not surprising. Who wants to buy a disk that; cost more then a regular DVD, wont play on anything other then the PSP and forces consumers to buy a duplicate of a DVD they may already own. Once again Sony is facing the folly that is DRM. Its DRM that prevents consumers from transfering a standard DVD to the PSP and it is DRM that Sony imposes that doesn’t allow you to watch your UMD on anything but the PSP (although) Sony now says they may allow you to connect the PSP to your TV for larger viewing, too late Sony) I can’t say that I will ever shed a tear over another Sony disaster. They are just cronicly stupid.
gquaglia, you gave me a great idea.
What Sony should have done is created a program to allow P2P owners to rip Sony DVDs onto the P2P. That would give people an incentive to buy Sony movies and it would have made the other movie companies look like the bad guys for not allowing it.
SN, that idea makes too much sense and we know that Sony doesn’t have much of that now a days.
Can someone explain how releasing fewer movie titles could have increased sales
Mere mortals like ourselves will never understand the complexity of the movie business. Thank god there are movie execs that can run a business so complex that it defile the laws of nature. God bless them in their infinite wisdom.
Sony has lost its way much like Apple in the 90’s. It needs to be run by someone who understands what Sony is not buy an MBA. They need a visionary that will create new cool products, not figure out how to monetize this or that. MBAs are good for paperwork and crap and for running non-creative companies. Organizations like Sony and Apple need visionaries like Steve Jobs not business people who just understand money.
“Can someone explain how releasing fewer movie titles could have increased sales?! ”
This is a case of supply and demand. If there is a large supply of movies available the consumer has more choice so he can pick and choose where he will spend his entertainment dollar. That choice then causes the studios to compete on price to attract the consumer’s money.
Sony and the movie studios could have avoided this mess by 1) not using a proprietary format, 2) release movies that the public actually wants, and 3) not charge the consumer double for purchasing the movie in a new format.
1 and 2 are no-brainers. What I mean by #3 is, if I own a copy of T2 on DVD, allow me to purchase a copy for my PSP at a reduced rate (say 1/2 normal price) or “allow P2P owners to rip Sony DVDs onto the P2P. That would give people an incentive to buy Sony movies and it would have made the other movie companies look like the bad guys for not allowing it.”
As it is though, we are going to see the same thing happen with blu-ray and HD-DVD. Movies will cost more, the media will not be interoperable, and studios will release second and third-rate movies first to test the waters. The result will be, nobody will buy them and prices will stay high.
G
Typical Sony with all their proprietary crap. This couldn’t happen soon enough. If we can kill BluRay, then the work is complete.
Yet again Sony continues their slide into irrelevance.
Mike T
I wonder who can see a movie in such a small screen (or play for that matter, and yes this applies to Nintendo DS, Gameboy, you name it)…
“not charge the consumer double for purchasing the movie in a new format.”
Despite the bull that the MPAA and RIAA are spouting out about piracy, this is the real reason for their vigerous embrace of DRM. A new business model that forces consumers to purchase separate media versions to play on different devices. Only more consumer rejection of such a model will force them to reconsider certain aspects of DRM.
gquaglia, you are 100% correct.
That’s the ONLY reason they want to limit our ability to make “personal” copies of copyrighted works. Not that we’re sharing it, because hundreds of studies have shown that people who download music usually go out and purchase the music they downloaded to sample.
Instead, it is to get us to keep buying the same thing over and over to keep the revenue stream flowing.
But, when the quality of the work (music, movies, what ever) sucks, nobody will buy. Studios don’t see that, they see people making personal copies and consider that pirating.
Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox and quit ranting. (Well, at least I’ll quit yelling. People walking past my office are wondering who I’m yelling at and why I’m foaming at the mouth.)
I own a PSP and I’m not feeling forced to buy a movie on UMD. If I really wanted to watch a movie on my PSP, I have a 1gb memory stick, and I can easily encode any movie I have from a DVD, or anything I’ve downloaded off the net, and play it on my PSP.
The only UMDs I need are for my games.
There is no DRM that I’m aware of on UMDs. It’s EXTREMELY EASY to dump the contents of a UMD into an ISO file, and use it as you see fit. UMDs have no copy protection what-so-ever, let alone DRM.
The reason why UMDs (for MOVIES) is because 1) it’s not universal 2) the cost more than DVD movies 3) you get more from a DVD movie 4) It’s cheaper to rip a DVD and put it on your PSP’s memory stick. DRM has nothing to do with this.
But with this story.. if there are business now trying to dump their UMD inventory for REALLY CHEAP.. I’ll buy some. $5 per copy would be nice.
Ok, so Sony blew it with UMDs. I don’t have one and don’t want one. But what about all those who do? If they bought one to watch movies on and there are no more movies being released, will Sony buy them back? Will there be a massive class action lawsuit against Sony for over hyping it?
This is exactly why I’m a relatively late adopter (and I don’t have much money.)
Seems to me, the natural media choice for portable video players is DivX movies on a mini-DVD
The $47 DVD player I just bought plays DivX videos and the tray accommodates 8cm discs. So that solves the duplicate movies issue.