MikeB said: @ Ausfalcon I mean, are you saying NJ5, nightsurge, starcraft, and kowenicki are all people from then? What you don't seem to realize is that I am not shy to confront such people with counter arguments and sources when they were overly negative towards the PS3 or would claim the 360 hardware to be more powerful. Like MorphOS fans didn't like my comments with regard to me stating that I saw more of a commercial potential in AmigaOS than MorphOS, these people of course don't like to be countered with arguments as well. I usually provide counter arguments and information politely, this cannot be said about all the people you are referring to here. That should be some food for thought. But I think people like you and "Guilding Light" are even worse. That goes beyond fanboyism.

But you can hardly accuse all the folks listed there as Xbox fanboys and/or Sony haters, at least not fairly.  You do it anyway as a smokescreen.  But anyone can look at their profiles and their posts and see what you are trying to do Mike.  The jig is up already on that. 

I also find you saying you are always polite amusing.  You were not polite in this thread to the person asking you about your relationship with Sony.  You wre not polite to me when I merely pointed that poster in the direction of a post from you that did speak to that relationship in your own words.  You were not polite recently when you were on here drunk.  And in general to troll itself is not polite.  Even if you are not cursing left and right, you are certainly not polite to any where near the degree you claim.

And you say I am beyond a fanboy (as in worse).  And yet I run Xbox360, Wii, and PS3.  And I enjoy all three systems.  That claim is as ridiculous as you saying that the others mentioned are all just Microsoft fanboys.

Anyway, it seems sadly obvious you are just going to keep up with the ridiculous defense that these guys are all Xbots and you are just some neutral fair guy who just happens to be able to show the constant excellence of Sony Inc.

 

 

 

@ Ausfalcon

UMD has become the de facto standard for mini-DVDs.

They have never claimed online distribution would be a bad thing for the future, just that some people prefer to have a disc and others don't.

Quoting myself from a few years ago here on VGChartz:

"I don't think UMD was ever intended to replace the DVD, the discs have far less capacity (good enough for a PSP screen, which is large and offers a high resolution compared to the Nintendo DS, but is small and offers a low resolution in comparison to a laptop). Blu-Ray is intended to be the successor to the DVD, not UMD."

I still hold this perspective and will continue to look at things from this perspective.

@ Ausfalcon

"Usually" isn't a synonym for "always".

I am only polite to people who adress me politely, those who don't I usually first ask to behave less childishly as we are usually discussing technology and not religion or your mother. If that does not help and nobody intervenes I think I can counter with less restraint, like was the case with regard to you. But I adressed you very politely early on despite your repetitive false allegations.

MikeB said: @ Ausfalcon UMD has become the de facto standard for mini-DVDs.

But thats not the de facto standard Sony said they were aiming for with the format.  We already have covered that, Sony's CEO had set the expectation higher.  Its nice to say they achieved what you say here.  But thats less than what they were realisticly shooting for. 

Who said they did claim that?  What does that have to do with whether UMD succeded or failed at Sony's original publicly stated expectations for that format?

Again??  Jeez.  What for?

Yes we know Mike, your opinions are immutable once formed, even if presented with info disputing such from Sony itself.  Your work-around, just dismiss what you don't want to hear as bad PR like you did a few posts ago.  And instead self quote yourself and present that as supposedly more compelling evidence than what the CEO of Sony said himself.  I think you just like to argue for the sake of arguing Mike.

@ Ausfalcon

The indirect summary you are linking to just states:

"PSP uses a new, Sony-developed optical media called the Universal Media Disc (UMD), which offers game software, full-motion video and other digital content. The UMD can store up to 1.8 Gbytes of digital data. Kutaragi said Sony has been in talks with several companies to make UMD the de facto compact storage media for the next generation of SD-quality video."

I don't read in this what you stated. I don't know of any other Mini-DVD or similar storage media standard.

MikeB said: @ Ausfalcon You were not polite in this thread to the person asking you about your relationship with Sony. "Usually" isn't a synonym for "always". I am only polite to people who adress me politely, those who don't I usually first ask to behave less childishly as we are usually discussing technology and not religion or your mother. If that does not help and nobody intervenes I think I can counter with less restraint, like was the case with regard to you. But I adressed you very politely early on despite your repetitive false allegations.

You are welcome to your opinion as I am mine.

MikeB said: @ Ausfalcon The indirect summary you are linking to just states: "PSP uses a new, Sony-developed optical media called the Universal Media Disc (UMD), which offers game software, full-motion video and other digital content. The UMD can store up to 1.8 Gbytes of digital data. Kutaragi said Sony has been in talks with several companies to make UMD the de facto compact storage media for the next generation of SD-quality video." I don't read in this what you stated. I don't know of any other Mini-DVD or similar storage media standard.

So your point is it succeeded because it existed in the first place?  Thats setting quite a low bar for success, and does not correlate to what Mr. Kutaragi said he hoped for above.

Meanwhile in the real world....stuff like below was going on:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/16/breaking-news-sonys-umds-arent-selling-well

One may be able to find other measures of success for the format.  I am not saying that its clear that none exist.  It might be interesting to see if there is any info on profitability (or not) for the format for Sony for instance. 

But saying its successful because it was the only Mini-DVD format is not really saying anything.  And its pretty clear that Mr. Kutaragi was expecting much more from the format.  No one licensed any players, it was not seen as any ushering in of a next generation in regard to SD video, etc.   Studio execs put it down over time.  Overall, not a very good picture in comparison to the hopes Sony held for it.

 

@ Ausfalcon

No, in the posting above I was referring to Ken's comment.

It's more successful than I expected, IMO UMD movies helped the PSP to become the multi-media handheld as Sony was aiming for. The R&D with regard to that has probably helped PSP sales (the most successful handheld gaming console for rivalling Nintendo's handhelds ever since the release of the original Gameboy) and this R&D can also be applied to digital download versions.

I think moving towards digital downloads (in addition to UMD movies or not) was always Sony's long term strategy for the PSP.

Without UMD movie value add, do I think that would have benefitted the PSP more? No, I don't think so. Understand?

MikeB said: @ Ausfalcon No, in the posting above I was referring to Ken's comment. It's more successful than I expected, IMO UMD movies helped the PSP to become the multi-media handheld as Sony was aiming for. The R&D with regard to that has probably helped PSP sales (the most successful handheld gaming console for rivalling Nintendo's handhelds ever since the release of the original Gameboy) and this R&D can also be applied to digital download versions. I think moving towards digital downloads (in addition to UMD movies or not) was always Sony's long term strategy for the PSP. Without UMD movie value add, do I think that would have benefitted the PSP more? No, I don't think so. Understand?

It being more successful than *you* personally expected does not set the bar at whether the format itself was a success or a failure to Sony or the public at large.

What Sony may or may not have planned for the long term strategy of the PSP's media format does not address the question of the OP.  Which was, was the UMD format itself a failure?

 

Sony had hopes for widespread adoption of "music-based" UMD:

http://www.us.playstation.com/News/PressReleases/209

http://www.i4u.com/article1542.html

That did not happen.

 

They admitted in 2007 it was faltering and not doing as well as they had hoped for movies:

http://news.filefront.com/could-umd-movies-makes-comeback/

And it never recovered as they hoped either.

 

The press noted early on in 2005 that UMD drive adoption was not occuring by any other drive manufacturers as Sony had hoped for in 2004:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-132921416.html

 

So lets stick to the topic thread.  The topic is *not* "was UMD a value-add to the PSP?"...

 

 

@ Ausfalcon

I think Sony's main focus was to make it hard to pirate UMDs onto recordables instead really pushing hard for widespread adoption. Looking back at how Sony has addressed the format, IMO that seems like sensible reasoning.