| Sony’s UMD Movies face Crisis |
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While launching a PlayStation Portable (PSP) gaming device last year, Sony was confident owners wouldn’t mind forking out $20 per title to add UMD-based movies to their collection. Now it seems Sony’s belief is about to thrash.
Universal Media Disc-UMD is a small optical storage device that Sony developed for its PSP portable gaming computers. The tiny disks are basically designed to store games, but consumers can also purchase UMD movie titles.
Movie studios and retailers have started abandoning Sony’s Universal Media Disk (UMD) for movies, because of its lack luster sales.
So many reasons are signalized by the people for UMD’s failure in the movie spectrum. Some castigated Sony for releasing too many titles too fast rather releasing titles gradually. High prices for UMD titles even though bonus materials were often cut out in order to save disc space was the reason for others. The UMD-based movies cost nearly $20 a title (similar to DVD movies), but can only be played on a PSP, which is one of the main reasons being cited for its failure. Apple’s 5G iPod which has pretty much hogged the limelight in regards to mobile video entertainment could be another reason.
Universal Studios Home Entertainment has completely halted producing UMD movies and one high-ranking exec claimed, "It’s awful. Sales are near zilch. It’s another Sony bomb - like Blu-ray."
Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment and Universal Studios have abandoned releasing UMD movies and some others like 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Buena Vista Home Entertainment are possibly reducing their new releases, drastically.
The other blow for UMD is the apprehensiveness of Wal-Mart- The largest retailer of US. Although the representatives declined to comment on UMD reports that the company will stop selling UMD movies altogether, things are looking much gloomier. A check at the store unveiled that the various shelves of movies in the PSP section were gone; all that remained were seven UMD titles sitting bookshelf-style on the top of the PSP section, with no prices or other information.
Still, if UMD flunks, it would not affect the PSP’s entertainment options. The company is still processing on its PSP Media Manager which it confides will be embraced by more and more PSP users as a way to access more than games on the handheld device.
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