PSP Spot

Sony Bringing UMD Movies Back to Life

Published by Yoshi on Aug 17th 2008 Sony have decided to have another shot at the 'movie market' with their Playstation Portable. They intend to lower prices and have signed deals with movie studios to allow them to license content and make digital copies of the movies for release on the PSP.

UMD movies never really worked out for Sony and after a year and a half of churning out UMD films that people just didn't want to buy, the studios gave up and deserted the UMD format altogether for movies. Sony Pictures were the only studio to keep on releasing UMD movies.

Sony have come to their senses though and in an effort to tap into the huge PSP movie market (which is basically a market based on pirated movies and copies of owned DVDs):

"We want to provide a legal offering from the studios and it´s an easier conversation to have with them now," said John Koller, director of hardware marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America. "There´s a lot of positive momentum with the PSP."

To attract consumers, Sony intend lowering the price of a new release from $14.99 to $9.99 and they have attracted Studios by promising to do the work themselves when it comes to licensing, manufacturing and distributing the movies. The studios have nothing to lose, it's all on Sony's head this time around.

"The future of PSP is bright for video because of all the different methods consumers have to enjoy it" Koller said.