Rumor: Sony UMD Movies Vanish from Target Store Shelves

[wraggster]

News from Gizmodo (http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/sony/rumor-sony-umd-movies-vanish-from-target-store-shelves-186796.php)

Our pencil-necked gamester in-laws at Kotaku gathered a rumor today, where an employee of the vast retail empire Target noticed that Sony's proprietary UMD movies had suddenly disappeared from his store. Could it be the doomed format's death rattles are beginning to bear their certain, inevitable fruit?

I work at a local Target store, at the electronics department. I walked in today and noticed something missing, other than my desire to be working, it was the PSP UMD movies section. Thinking it was moved I searched then finally decided to ask around. To my suprise, my boss told me that Target wasn't going to be selling them anymore. Now I'm not sure if its in every store, but I decided to give the other targets a call in my city, and they also said they had pulled them. So, not sure what that means, but with so many people saying the UMD movies are pretty pointless, and sales being sluggish, I cant help but wonder if PSP movies are soon to go the way of the Betamax.
We saw this coming months ago, as did nearly everyone else. Maybe one of these days Sony will finally realize that every proprietary consumer format it's introduced has tanked. Add one more to it with the UMD, where its absence from Target is probably just the beginning of its one-way trip to the ash heap of history.

[inlovewithi]

Maybe now they'll let regular video formats play on the PSP

[Video_freak]

who didnt see this coming? i for one dont own a single UMD movie

[Combustolux]

yeah i know why not buy a cheap 512 mb pro duo and the dvd of the movie?

[shenske37]

i actually love the UMD movies, but there is no way i'm going to buy a movie for at least $5 more than a DVD costs (and the DVD has speacial features!).

if sony wants to revive that UMD format they need to drop the price about $5 under what DVDs cost (to make up for the lack of certain features).

this is just me dreaming but if sony came out with their own psp to tv converter that would definately boost up sales of UMD movies.

[SteveV2]

Well, if UMD films are coming to an end, nows the time to stock up. Few years down the line you'll make a fortune.

I have 1, dodgeball :D Love it.

[The_Ultimate_Eggman]

Noone wants to sit for 2 to 3 hrs sttaring at a small screen to watch a movie.Gaming is different that can be done in short bursts but movies u like to watch in on sit.Good riddence to bad rubbish i say.

[felonyr301]

i say buy the dvds and convert it and if you want quality as the umds then get a bigger memory stick than convert it to pmp avc for full res and your good to go.

[felonyr301]

"I walked in today and noticed something missing, other than my desire to be working" lol dont we all

[whitey75]

I think umds are great for if ur on holidays or travelling on a train or plane. If i'm travelling from australia to europe or america, then i've got over 20 hrs to kill. A couple of umd's would go great.

Or if ur stuck in a holtel room with nothing to do while on a conference, chuck a umd in. Saves ur memory card for homebrew.

I guess once the 4Gb and up cards are released for a resonable price then we can convert a cpl of movies and watch them off the memory card, but till that day umds are great. In aus all of the universal umds fell to $10 aus recently, i was able to pick up king kong and serenity for this price, so thats not bad at all.

Unfortunately ur all right, umd's were overpriced from day dot, not a good approach when ur trying to sell a new product!

[Voltron]

i say buy the dvds and convert it and if you want quality as the umds then get a bigger memory stick than convert it to pmp avc for full res and your good to go.

I want to try making a PMP AVC Video. Can anyone suggest any programs or PSP homebrew that will be needed to accomplish this? ANy help would be appreciated.

And about the failure of UMD Videos, I can't say I really feel bad. But I feel Sony will make up for this failure with Blu-Ray. I really think the Blu-Ray format will beat HD-DVD and I suspect the PS3 will be a major success.

[mavsman4457]

^I agree. With the incredible disc space that a blu-ray disc can have, up to 200gb for 8 layers or something. Those discs could lower the prices of hard drives, memory sticks, memory cards, DVDs, and CDs.

[LampDev]

I've got 2 words for you guys.
"Collector's Items"

Just don't expect any of it to be worth anything until 2050. :)

[Pumped'Up]

UMD movies could have been a great success, only if they were priced much lower than DVD....and I'm talking prices at $12US/$15CAN or somewhere 1/2 the cost of the DVD.

Example, $28CAN for UMD "Predator" when the DVD special edition can be had for $10CAN?? Sony must be freakn nuts. I'm not happy to see UMD movies on its way out as I would have rather bought a UMD movie than take up a 1GB on my Memory stick...but again this all depends on the price of the UMD movie, and currently anything over $15 is just too expensive.

[jensy]

UMD movie takes waaay too much battery life. The only real upsides is that it doesn't take any memory stick space, perfect quality, and that they are fairly user friendly.

You only get a good 2 hours or so on a normal battery watching a UMD movie.

[DrSarcasmo]

Blu-ray will go the way of Betamax and the Great Auk. I've heard rumors of heavy fail rates during burns of commercial films in the industry. At $5 to $10 a disk just for the media, the major studios will get fed up with this format too.

Of course I could be wrong, but the smart money is NOT to back Sony on ANY of thier proprietary formats.
Once game studios start burning games for the PS3 we'll get a better idea of the reliability, burn-wise, of this format...

At the projected price of ~$85 a game for the PS3 (because of the blu-ray media price) and
$600 for the full system I actually see the PS3 as the console in 3rd place in the nex-gen console wars.

I see rich kids getting the console, but that's limiting your market. Your average kid will end up getting an X-Box360 or the Wii...

Mark my words, people. I'm right occasionally...:D

DrSarcasmo

[mavsman4457]

As pumped as I am for the PS3 I wouldn't mind that much if Sony got a slap in the face and their high-prices screwed them over. I am willing to pay $600 for a console but if the games cost anything more than xbox 360 games then I will be angry.

[Video_freak]

I've got 2 words for you guys.
"Collector's Items"

Just don't expect any of it to be worth anything until 2050. :)

lmao :p i could actually see the psp as a collectors item buy 2015!!!:eek:

[LeperMessiah]

I think Sony should shy away from Movuies on UMD as studios are not profiting on them, I think that UMD's should be marketed with a more special interest stance:

Concerts
DVD Audio on UMD
Anime
TV Shows

Of course these should all be at a lower price point.
considering the lower manufacturing costs of Digital entertainment, (think VCR vs DVD player), the formats are ridiculously expensive.

Anyone remember years ago when CD gaming was first on the horizon? EGM magazine did a feature with a breakdown of how CD games would be broken down for consumer pricing as compared to cartridges. They stated that where a cartridge would be approx $65+ USD then a CD game would be approx $15+ USD.

Yeah I didn't believe that one for very long, especially when I bought FFVII at a K-Mart the day it came out and I shelled out $109 CDN for it.


Also it would not be unreasonable to see a website, (or multiple ones), where you could customize a UMD, so let's say you went to Warner Bros and wanted certain episodes of Smallville, (or whatever), you could pick and choose and the custom UMD would be couriered to you.