More PSP News

Sony Movie Unit to Issue Films for PSP Game System
Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:27 PM GMT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The home video unit of Sony Corp. (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday it will release four movies in April on a new disc format designed for Sony's PlayStation Portable handheld video game device.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment said it will release "XXX," "Hellboy," "Resident Evil 2" and "One Upon A Time in Mexico" on April 19 in the Universal Media Disc or UMD format, with additional monthly releases in the future. The unit did not set a price for the movie discs.

The small UMD holds 1.8 gigabytes of data, three times the capacity of a CD-ROM. It was designed as a vehicle for games and other media on the PSP.

Sony Computer Entertainment of America will release the PSP in North America on March 24, with a bundled copy of the movie "Spider-Man 2."

In unveiling the PSP for the U.S. market in January, top Sony Computer executives said they would probably wait a few months after the PSP's release before seriously pushing movies in the new disc format.

But earlier this month, when Sony set the launch date and price for the PSP, executives said the strategy had changed and that there would be movie releases within a month of launch.

Cool. I wonder if Blockbuster will be stocking UMD disks as well and how the price will compare to regular DVDs.