James Delahunty
20 Jun 2005 12:00
The September European launch of Sony's Playstation Portable handheld console will include the availability of 20 PSP games and 10 movies. The release date comes months after the initial expected date due to supply shortages. Although seen mainly as a console for gaming, the PSP is also able to play music and movies and 100,000 movies for the device have already been sold in the United States and Japan. "Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will have 10 films available from day one," said Patrick Vyncke, the PlayStation chief for the Benelux countries.
By mid-September, Sony hopes to have 20 titles on sale. The 100,000 sales figure however, does not include copies of Spiderman 2 as the movie was distributed with many of the PSP consoles. No details were given on the price of the movies, but they sell at about $19-$29 in the United States. The movie releases for the console are geared toward young adults between 18 and 25 years old whereas movies targeted more towards children, older users and the female audience will be available at later stages.
Now that most movie bugs have bought up their favourite movie releases on DVD, publishers are looking for an alternative way to sell discs. The movies will be available on UMD discs, a proprietary format that Sony opened to encourage content providers to make content available for the PSP. However, when they opened the format they probably expected mostly just movie studios to release movies on UMD but now have to deal with more undesirable content being released for the console.
PSP Pornography
While Sony wants more content providers to release material on UMD discs for the PSP, the company did not have porn in mind as a priority for the device. However, 2 adult content publishers announced plans to release a total of 7 porn titles on UMD discs for the PSP starting in July. "It is utterly undesirable, but we cannot stop software makers from selling such videos," a Sony Computer Entertainment representative said.
The availability of porn for the device probably won’t have any effect on sales of the console however. Analysts point out that it didn't affect the growing popularity of DVDs or the Internet, both of which are used to distribute massive amounts of porn. Despite the availability of porn and movies for the device, games are still expected to generate the most revenue of course. "For the PSP, [movie viewing] is definitely a consideration point, but the quality of the movie experience is still pretty low given the small number of UMD titles available, and difficulties in getting short-form content through flash memory," Jupiter Media senior analyst Jay Horwitz told TechNewsWorld.
Sources:
Rueters
GeekInformed.com