Chris Kohler
Culture

PSP and the Disappearing Downloads

Cnet asks if digital movie downloads can help the ailing PSP: The Financial Times, for instance, reported last December that Sony planned to launch a PSP download store early this year. But as April heads into May, still no store. A Sony spokesman declined to discuss the issue. To some observers, a PSP video store […]

PspCnet asks if digital movie downloads can help the ailing PSP:

The Financial Times, for instance, reported last December that Sony planned to launch a PSP download store early this year. But as April heads into May, still no store. A Sony spokesman declined to discuss the issue.

To some observers, a PSP video store is an admission by Sony that the company's Universal Media Discs (UMDs), the mini DVDs that play only on
PSPs, are a bust.

Well. We don't need a movie download store to know that UMD is a bust. Cnet's piece takes a closer look at Sony's latest format misstep in the piece, with John Koller noting that the format isn't dead because Sony continues to support it, which is what Nintendo said about ROM cartridges in 1997.

Ultimately, at this point I'm not sure there's any saving the PSP. Going with a disc-based format for content when the rest of the world was going digital is why Sony is losing to Apple and the video iPod for the handheld movie market. And it's exactly why Sony lost to Apple over digital music, he said as he glared sternly across the room at his Hi-MD player.

At this point, iPod is so dominant that Sony will now have to come up with a completely different, exciting new value proposition and a new piece of hardware. Simply putting a Band-Aid over a broken leg isn't going to help, and I think Sony knows this, which is why they're not putting that much effort into a PSP download store.