Hollywood Giving Up on UMD Movies

Overpriced movies not selling quite as well as studio executives would like. Who would've thought?

Walk into any entertainment mega-store and you'll see UMD movies by the hundreds, easily outnumbering the PSP's game pickings. In the beginning, movies on UMD did well on the PSP and some even sold more than 100,000 copies, but Hollywood is getting tired of the format's poor performance lately and several studios are pulling out.

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"It's awful. Sales are near zilch," an unnamed Universal Studios executive told the Hollywood Reporter this week. "It's another Sony bomb - like Blu-ray." The executive said that Universal has stopped all UMD movie production.

And Universal is not alone. 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Buena Vista and more are either pulling out or cutting back heavily on their releases. This lack of confidence is spreading to retailers too, with US giant Wal-Mart seemingly losing faith and giving less floor space to the format.

"No one's watching movies on PSP," a high-ranking studio executive said. "It's a game player, period."

The sudden shift will come as a wake up call to Sony, which has tried hard to convince potential buyers that it's a game player and much more.

The demise of movies on UMD doesn't necessarily mean that people aren't watching movies on the PSP, though. As high-capacity memory cards become cheaper and software becomes easier, many are turning to ripping their own DVDs instead of paying a premium for discs that can only be played on the handheld.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games