Over 8 million UMD movies have been sold for the Sony PSP encouraging GameFly, the video game rental service, to begin offering flicks via mail-order last month. So I gave Netflix a call to see if they’re still sitting this one out. Steve Swasey, Director of Corporate Communications, told me Netflix has no plans to rent UMD movies saying it’s a “highly specialized, marginal” market niche. Instead Netflix is focusing new media attention on high definition DVD offerings. Meanwhile, Tom’s Hardware reports Sony will be increasing production of UMD movies from 200,000/day to 500,000/day to keep up with demand and they expect to sell 130 million discs in 2008.
With such high UMD movie production goals, will we be seeing UMD set-top boxes, PS3 UMD accessories, or even a new Sony Clie line in the future?
First.
Well played! (And UMD sure failed to live up to Sony’s expectations.)