The UMD format has received a lot of criticism from both the games industry and movie industry, however, Sony isn’t going to adandon the format so easily. This stand was recently echoed by PlayStation Portable Senior Marketing Manager John Koller as he reiterated the different strengths (and weaknesses) of the format.
“UMD possesses many strengths, from size to form factor to portability. Duplication of UMDs is much easier, cheaper than cartridges. We’ve really optimized time and cost by going with a disc-based format. UMD is a unique medium to create games and developers need to understand that when tackling the system.”
He added, “There’s no question the biggest weakness is related to porting games from other platforms. Publishers are concerned about the size of UMD because they can’t cram a DVD game on to it”.
Given all these, the marketing manager explained that Sony really believes in the format and is not going to drop it. Koller shared, “We’ll never walk away from our base. Whether it’s movies or game content, third parties have an incredible opportunity to utilize it. The future of UMD is bright”.