Studios Disappointed by UMD Movie Sales

Apparently the glut of movies on the shelves isn't indicative of a major multimedia coup by the PSP.

Walk into your favourite entertainment retailer and you'll see them - row after row of movies on UMD for the PSP. You'd think that they were popular, and in the beginning they were, but movie studios are losing interest in Sony's closed disc format.

While movie studios will still push certain genres, they will soon start slowing down the machine gun fire of UMD movies onto store shelves, Variety is reporting. The issue is simply one of sales, as Virgin's Chris Anstey explained:

"We have been encouraged by the results of a couple successful campaigns that we've featured to help promote them, but the overall impact of the format has still been nominal,"

This jives with Warner Bros. opinion of the format. Company vice president Jeff Baker said that while some movies have done well, he's "disappointed" with how the new format has done. Top movies can sell up to 100,000 copies, but most do only a fraction of that.

Sony, of course, isn't oblivious and it's attacking the problem from two angles. First, it'll start releasing some movies in UMD-plus-DVD bundles, as a workaround to the buyer dilemma of having to buy the same flick twice.

Sony is also working on an adaptor that would allow you to watch UMD movies on your TV. There are already third-party adaptors that do this, but they're kludged and lack the official support needed for buyer confidence.

But perhaps the biggest reason why people aren't buying movies on UMD is because it's yet another media format to worry about, especially with next-gen DVD waiting in the wings.

"With standard definition, HD DVD, Blu-ray and PSP, all these formats take up space," one retailer told Variety. "Consumers aren't going to buy three or four configurations of the same movie. Something has to give."

So next time you walk into your local mega-retailer, take a good look at that copy of Goodfellas on UMD. It might be the last time you see it.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games