Posted on: Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Studios zooming in on gaming device
By Thomas K. Arnold
USA Today
Frederick Green likes his DVD. But after watching "Spider-Man 2" on his new PlayStation Portable, he's eager to watch more movies on the little hand-held game player. "The graphics are great," says the 37-year-old Fairlawn, Ohio, resident.
Advertiser library photo Five of the six major studios are on board. The latest to click in: Paramount Pictures and MGM. Only Warner Bros. continues to sit out.
More than 70 UMD titles are in stores or are scheduled to arrive in the coming months. "No other format has gotten this much software support since DVD was launched eight years ago," says analyst Tom Adams of Adams Media Research.
Paramount has announced 11 titles, including releases from fellow Viacom divisions Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV, making Paramount the first studio to bring TV shows to UMD. The first batch, due Aug. 9, consists of "Team America: World Police," "Coach Carter" and "Without a Paddle." "Sahara," "The Italian Job" and MTV's "Viva la Bam: Volume 1" follow Aug. 30. Coming later are "SpongeBob SquarePants the Movie" and compilation UMDs of "Chappelle's Show," "Ren & Stimpy," "South Park" and "SpongeBob SquarePants" TV episodes.
Thomas Lesinski, president of worldwide home entertainment for Paramount Pictures, says the titles were chosen to fit the "key demographics for PSP," which are teens and young adult males.
MGM, now partly owned by Sony, will release its first batch of four titles Sept. 13: "Beauty Shop," "Be Cool," "Stargate: Atlantis" and "Bulletproof Monk."
Benjamin Feingold, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, the first studio to supply movies on UMD, says it was always Sony's intent that the PSP be more than a game player. Releasing movies for the PSP, he says, allows studios to "establish a beachhead in the portable, mobile market."
Feingold says that as people spend more time with cell phones, personal digital assistants and other portable devices, "it's important for our industry to have movies available."
Since PSP was launched, more than 1.2 million units have sold. Sony's Feingold projects that within 12 months, 6 million to 8 million PSP machines will be in North American households.
Analysts say that the market could grow to 25 million or even 30 million households.
All the big discount and electronics chains, from Wal-Mart and Target to Best Buy and Circuit City, carry UMD movies. They're for sale at big music chains such as Trans World Entertainment and Musicland Group Inc., and dedicated game chains GameStop and EB Games.
Two UMD movies have now sold more than 100,000 copies each: Sony's "House of Flying Daggers" and "Resident Evil 2," both released April 19. Sony's Feingold calls the sales tally "remarkable," noting that it took nine months for the first DVD title, "Air Force One," to cross the 100,000-unit mark.
UMD's success on the movie front appears to be coming at the expense of the Warner-initiated Mini-DVD, a three-inch disc that can be played on regular DVD players as well as on a dedicated hand-held unit from CyberHome. Last January, Fox, Paramount and Universal joined Warner in supporting the Mini. But after an unsuccessful test at Best Buy, all three bowed out. Warner is giving the Mini one last shot with another test at Target.
Green's enthusiasm may be spreading. Though the hand-held PSP, launched in March, is considered primarily a gaming device, Hollywood studios are aggressively releasing movies on the PSP's proprietary Universal Media Disc, a 2 1/4-inch disc encased in a protective plastic shell.
Several Hollywood studios are heavily marketing movies for the popular PlayStation Portable, which is considered primarily a game player. A wider variety of titles — on the device's proprietary Universal Media Disc, a 2-inch disc encased in plastic — will hit stores in the next few months.
