All the press on the Playstation Portable these last couple days has focused primarily on hardware, and while no doubt the specs of the game machine are great with its ability to play Playstation 2 quality games and movies and whatnot, I wonder if there’s something bigger in the announcement: the rise of the UMD.
The UMD, or Universal Media Disk, is what PSP games will be stored on, and Sony’s already looking to get movies and music on them too, for playback on the PSP. But the name itself suggests that there may be even bigger plans for this little disk. If Sony can put its weight behind media distribution on this format of disk it could be the beginning of a new media format for all sorts of portable media playback devices. Holding 1.8 gigs of music or movies, which is 2.5 times a CD and almost twice the capacity of the biggest Minidisc, UMD could easily take over the Minidisc, Microdrive and flash MP3 market, and make a big splash in the new area of portable video playback devices.
Of course, this could all be undercut by Sony’s new adherance to proprietary formats and DRM. The Minidisc never really took off in the US because it couldn’t compete with the speed and convenience of MP3 players that don’t require complicated translation of one format to another. Sony’s decision to limit playback on MD players to only ATRAC3+ encoded tunes instantly relegated the MD player to Betamax status: better technology doomed to the trash heap.
There’s a lot of promise in Sony’s new UMD. To capitalize on it Sony will have to license it broadly and minimize restrictions on playback formats, allowing for manufacturers to use them for MPEGs or MP3s as they like. If Sony decides to do that (which is unlikely) they will surely have a steady revenue from devices and media licenses that will exceed any brief profits they may derive from limiting the disk to playback of proprietary formats only.