Jubenhimer
Member
The PlayStation Portable was an important part of PlayStation history. It was the first time the brand went on the go, and it brought several key innovations with it. A powerful chipset allowed for near PS2 quality games and worlds, and Sony's patented Xross Media Bar let you not only play games, but also watch videos, view photos, and listen to music. Alongside the Nintendo DS, the PSP was remarkably ahead of its time, predating the multipurpose smartphones that dominate our lives today. Yet it also brought with it one of Sony's biggest failures yet.
Much like PlayStations 1-3, the PSP was used by Sony as a trojan horse for a newly developed optical media format, the Universal Media Disc, or UMD for short. A compact disc able to hold up to 1.8 GB of data, far more than the Cartridge formats of Nintendo handhelds. Portable DVD players at the time were expensive, and they along with DVDs, were too large to just whip out on a park bench. On paper, UMDs looked like a more enticing option. They were much smaller than DVDs, making them easier to carry around, and for just $250, the PSP was both a games platform, and a media player in one. What could go wrong?... Well, a lot more than anybody anticipated.
1.) By far the biggest problem with UMD, was the fact it was an optical format to begin with. For all the strengths optical media had at the time, portability wasn't one of them. Not only did the PSP suffer long load times, which is a big no-no when it comes to on the go content, but all the errors disc-based media is prone to are amplified by the mobile nature of the device. UMD was more likely to skip, more likely to not be read, more likely to break easily compared to DVDs. Which brings me to...
2.) UMDs were flimsy as fuck. From their tiny size, to their cheap casing, UMD was a notoriously fragile format. Many people even had to make their own replacement casings for them because the stock ones were so bad. Optical media is inherently less reliable than solid state media like cartridges, but that's more forgivable in a home setting where you aren't likely to take discs outside very often. But with UMD, not only were you more encouraged to do so, but you were expected to carry them with you, and nobody wanted to deal with a pocket full of loose UMDs that were likely to get scratched or cracked.
3.) When you get right down to it, there just wasn't a whole lot to watch on UMD. To Sony's credit, they did manage to get a lot of distributors to back UMD in its early days. Every major studio including Fox, Disney, Paramount, WB, MGM, even Sony's own Columbia were on board at launch. But as time went on, less and less UMD videos came out, as distributors instead focused on Digital releases via the PlayStation Store. As such, UMD became exclusively used for PSP games, as opposed to the all-purpose format Sony hoped it'd become.
Sony was ambitious with UMD, hoping it could make a format as ubiquitous as DVD for mobile devices. But in the end, Cartridges and Digital downloads were just more reliable for on the go media. Which is why the PlayStation Vita abandoned the UMD format in favor of a DS-like proprietary cartridge format.
Much like PlayStations 1-3, the PSP was used by Sony as a trojan horse for a newly developed optical media format, the Universal Media Disc, or UMD for short. A compact disc able to hold up to 1.8 GB of data, far more than the Cartridge formats of Nintendo handhelds. Portable DVD players at the time were expensive, and they along with DVDs, were too large to just whip out on a park bench. On paper, UMDs looked like a more enticing option. They were much smaller than DVDs, making them easier to carry around, and for just $250, the PSP was both a games platform, and a media player in one. What could go wrong?... Well, a lot more than anybody anticipated.
1.) By far the biggest problem with UMD, was the fact it was an optical format to begin with. For all the strengths optical media had at the time, portability wasn't one of them. Not only did the PSP suffer long load times, which is a big no-no when it comes to on the go content, but all the errors disc-based media is prone to are amplified by the mobile nature of the device. UMD was more likely to skip, more likely to not be read, more likely to break easily compared to DVDs. Which brings me to...
2.) UMDs were flimsy as fuck. From their tiny size, to their cheap casing, UMD was a notoriously fragile format. Many people even had to make their own replacement casings for them because the stock ones were so bad. Optical media is inherently less reliable than solid state media like cartridges, but that's more forgivable in a home setting where you aren't likely to take discs outside very often. But with UMD, not only were you more encouraged to do so, but you were expected to carry them with you, and nobody wanted to deal with a pocket full of loose UMDs that were likely to get scratched or cracked.
3.) When you get right down to it, there just wasn't a whole lot to watch on UMD. To Sony's credit, they did manage to get a lot of distributors to back UMD in its early days. Every major studio including Fox, Disney, Paramount, WB, MGM, even Sony's own Columbia were on board at launch. But as time went on, less and less UMD videos came out, as distributors instead focused on Digital releases via the PlayStation Store. As such, UMD became exclusively used for PSP games, as opposed to the all-purpose format Sony hoped it'd become.
Sony was ambitious with UMD, hoping it could make a format as ubiquitous as DVD for mobile devices. But in the end, Cartridges and Digital downloads were just more reliable for on the go media. Which is why the PlayStation Vita abandoned the UMD format in favor of a DS-like proprietary cartridge format.
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