A report in the April 2-8, edition of Home Media Retailing, a home-entertainment trade publication published by the Video Software Dealers Association, asserted that the market for movies formatted for Sony’s PlayStation Portable is dying — already. Only on the scene for about one year, movies in Sony’s proprietary Universal Media Disc format generated a flurry of activity in the mainstream, at least initially: 239 theatrical and TV titles were either on shelves or in production within five months of the PSP’s launch, and two Sony Pictures titles actually sold more than 100,000 units relatively quickly, according to the DVD Release Report.
Then the novelty wore off rather quickly, hastened in part by the launch of Apple’s video iPod, which the public saw as smaller, chic-er and easier to use. After all, the PSP was designed primarily as a gaming device, and its lack of onboard storage put it at a distinct disadvantage against the iPod’s integrated hard drive, which stores hundreds of hours of video, music and data.
Both brick-and-mortar retailers and producers in the mainstream already are dumping the UMD category, according to Thomas K. Arnold’s article, “PSP Movies on Way Out.” Arnold quoted an unnamed “high-ranking executive” at Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment as saying “Releasing titles on UMD is the exception rather than the rule. No one’s even breaking even on them.”
In the adult realm, the story is similar. Although movies on UMD were never much of a consideration for adult content producers because of manufacturing constrictions, a number of adult companies formatted their products in an MPEG4 format appropriate for the PSP and made them available for download on Websites. Most on the video side, like Jules Nelson at Crush Video, viewed portable porn more as a marketing maneuver than as a profit center of their own. Some companies hoped to turn the portable movement into a moneymaking enterprise, but most of their efforts were focused on the iPod.
Fetish content producer Hellhouse Video is one such company. While looking for a partner to take over the DVD-manufacturing end of the distribution sphere, Hellhouse dove headlong into electronic distribution of its product. Co-owner Ty Gonty, who also serves as the company’s chief geek, continues to feel portability is important in the modern age, but even though he’s a staunch supporter of Sony and the PSP, he thinks the device’s days as a video viewer are numbered. “PSP was never meant to be a video device,” Gonty said, adding that Sony soon will introduce a portable Vaio to challenge the iPod. “MPEG4 is the market, not the device itself. Relying on one device to rule the world is kind of risky. Pitching to mobile devices in general is the key. Our goal is to produce content for as many media as possible.
“PSP was never really big for us,” Gonty continued. “The free clips we started with [to whet viewers’ appetites] did well, but people didn’t buy the full-length downloads because they’d have had to buy a media stick to hold them — and those things aren’t cheap. It got us a ton of exposure, though.”
Bo Kenney, chief executive officer of perennially cutting-edge LGI Digital and SexZ Pictures, said, judging by his companies’ experience with portable porn, iPod won the consumer war coming out of the gate. “We’ve had more than twice as many downloads [from our Website] for iPods as for PSPs,” he said. “I’m not sure the UMD is ever going to be a viable format. The iPod format is the direction things are going to go, partly because Sony is so territorial with UMD.”
Kenney also is dedicated to the portability of adult content and looks forward to the day when one piece of content formatted one way will be playable on any electronic device. He predicts a docking station that will allow iPod users to connect their devices to any television will be on the market soon. To prepare for that day, SexZ Pictures recently began including MPEG4, iPod-ready, full-length movie files on its retail DVDs.
Gonty and Kenney agree that the smart adult content producer already is preparing for the near-future day when the majority of consumers will demand their content be portable and mobile. “[The portability debate] was never about PSP versus iPod,” Gonty said. “It was about mobile formats, and PSP was one of the mobile formats.
“Mobile isn’t going to go away.”
