Wave bye to UMD

With the slowing of movie studio support (Universal and Paramount) to Sony for their proprietary UMD format, the UMD seems to be waning both in the interest of consumers and retailers.

Both Best Buy and Wal-Mart (two primary venues for distribution) have toned back their UMD displays, giving the products very little face coverage. To make matters worse, according to a manager at a Target in California (information gathered from Gamespot.com) Target as a whole has "stopped carrying them nationwide".

Well that does not bode well for Sony and their leap into the future with really useful media formats? *cough* blue-ray *cough*.

While Sony has made no official statement about any of this, they have released Memory Stick movies, available for digital distribution. First off, they are now trying to get consumers to pay for what hackers have been doing for free, and the kicker here is that Sony's memory stick movies run at 240x320 pixels, whereas the PSP is capable of displaying 480x272... awww... Sony, you want us to pay more for worse quality?

No thanks, I'll pass.

\\drew