Bye-bye PSP UMD movies?

Bad news for Sony seeping out of La La Land today, with The Hollywood Reporter announcing that two major Hollywood studios, Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures, will not be releasing any more of their movies on UMD.

Major retailers are also considerably reducing the space they allocate for UMD discs. There is also a strong rumour that Wal-Mart will stop stocking UMD’s at some point very soon.

If UMD movies have any kind of a future, SPOnG feels that it is in providing movies to the niche audience of young adult, mostly male gamers. So expect to see Sci-Fi flicks and cult TV comedy UMDs still being produced. However, don’t expect to see many RomComs or historical documentaries.

It would seem that the studios are more focused on moving towards HD-DVD formats. And while PSP owners are able to buy DVD movies at a much lower price and rip them onto the PSP’s memory stick for portable viewing, there is increasingly less of an incentive to buy movies on UMD.

As one SPOnG staffer puts it: "whilst there is a minor noticeable difference in quality [in ripping DVD movies] it's still not enough to make me want to shell out more on buying UMDs. Plus I can't watch UMDs on the telly at home."

One exec quoted in the Reporter said, "No one's watching movies on PSP. It's a game player, period." Another studio source told them that, "Releasing titles on UMD is the exception rather than the rule. No one's even breaking even on them."

However, all is perhaps not dead on the UMD movie front. The Hollywood Reporter story concludes that, “...next week, Sony Computer Entertainment executives will begin making the rounds of the Hollywood studios to discuss plans for making the PSP able to connect to TV sets."