Rumor: Sony UMD Movies Vanish from Target Store Shelves

[wraggster]

News from Gizmodo

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 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!