Initially, when the Play Station Portable was launched it was very successful as a handheld gaming console despite the fact that this device also supports high quality movie playback. The sales of the game UMDs have been always high but the sales of movie UMDs has never reached to that much height. One major reason for this was that the movie discs were very much expensive. They cost more than a standard DVD. Due to the poor response many studios discontinued the manufacturing and licensing of the game UMD for PSP. Ultimately it forced the hardcore PSP fans to access and download illegal movie files which were ripped and stored on the World Wide Web.
Now the Sony Entertainment has decided to boost the popularity and sales of the legal UMDs. The company has now promised to take care of most of the work such as licensing, manufacturing, marketing and distribution of movie UMDs. The company has also dropped the prices of the discs this time in order to make sure that the PSP fans now don’t look for any other alternate methods to enjoy movies on their consoles. The new UMDs will be available with a price tag ranging from $9.99 to $14.99, i.e. $10 to $25 less than the initial price of the discs which was announced few years back.
The director of hardware marketing John Koller said, “We want to provide a legal offering from the studios, … and it’s an easier conversation to have with them now. There is a lot of positive momentum with the PSP.”
The new UMDs are targeted to please the young males basically as they make up 92 percent of the total PSP owners. According to Koller, ” The biggest issue with UMD was the lack of creating for a targeted demo. When we first launched, it was a difficult sale. I don’t think it’s a big stretch to say that a 16-year-old doesn’t have a lot of discretionary income. … We were offering UMDs that were more expensive than DVDs at the time. And we want content that is in line with what the demo is asking for, action and comedy … not romantic dramas.”
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