Mental notes to myself » Sony

UMD died?

Harun Yayli — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 12:16:23 +0000

Reuters is reporting that Universal Media Disc, Sony’s PSP-only movie format, is about to kick the bucket. While the discs’ novelty factor resulted in strong sales shortly after the PSP’s May 2005 launch, interest rapidly dropped and movie companies are no longer interested in producing titles.
From the article:

Universal Studios Home Entertainment has completely stopped producing UMD movies, according to executives who asked not to be identified by name. Said one high-ranking exec: It’s awful. Sales are near zilch. It’s another Sony bomb — like Blu-ray.

PSP Browser

Harun Yayli — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 15:32:48 +0000

The update 2.0 for PSP is out so the internet browser…

here is the headers for PSP browser…
no gzip or other encoding it seems…

A huge warning : If you want to be PSP friendly website. Don’t use upper case letters in the URL.

Update: One of the biggest questions: No it doesn’t support AJAX
and CSS is a bit problematic for the div having absolute positioning in relative divs…

Timestamp:Fri, 26 Aug 2005 15:24:45 +0000 SERVER:Array ( [DOCUMENT_ROOT] => /*******/test [HTTP_ACCEPT] => */*;q=0.01 [HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING] => [HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE] => en [HTTP_CONNECTION] => Keep-Alive [HTTP_HOST] => test.tumbleside.com [HTTP_USER_AGENT] => Mozilla/4.0 (PSP (PlayStation Portable); 2.00) [PATH] => /*******/sbin [REMOTE_ADDR] => ******* [REMOTE_PORT] => 53356 [SCRIPT_FILENAME] => /*******/browsers/infomailer.php [SERVER_ADDR] => ******* [SERVER_ADMIN] => ******* [SERVER_NAME] => test.tumbleside.com [SERVER_PORT] => 80 [SERVER_SIGNATURE] =>

Apache/1.3.33 Server at test.tumbleside.com Port 80


    [SERVER_SOFTWARE] => Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/4.4.0 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.8.22 OpenSSL/0.9.7a

    [GATEWAY_INTERFACE] => CGI/1.1

    [SERVER_PROTOCOL] => HTTP/1.1

    [REQUEST_METHOD] => GET

    [QUERY_STRING] =>

    [REQUEST_URI] => /browsers/infomailer.php

    [SCRIPT_NAME] => /browsers/infomailer.php

    [PATH_TRANSLATED] => /*******/infomailer.php

    [PHP_SELF] => /browsers/infomailer.php

    [argv] => Array

        (

        )

[argc] => 0 )

PSP optimized novel

Harun Yayli — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 12:56:32 +0000

Publishers seem to like the PSP environment. It’s a bold desicion for marketting I believe.

here is a novel for PSP

Windows and Linux on the Sony PSP

Harun Yayli — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 13:29:00 +0000

Windows and Linux on the Sony PSP? hmm

Majority Of Customers Prefer Blu-Ray

Harun Yayli — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 15:18:42 +0000

From Slashdot:

A poll shows Blu-ray as the preferred choice, as conducted by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates. Customers were given a side-by-side comparison of HD-DVD and Blu-ray. The results were that 58 percent of the 1,200 polled chose Blu-ray, and 26 percent were undecided. Generally speaking, HD-DVD is preferred by those seeking to reduce manufacturing costs while Blu-ray is preferred by those more interested in features and data storage.” Sony’s PS3 is to use the Blu-Ray format.

Different Pricing Strategy from Sony

Harun Yayli — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 12:10:56 +0000

PlayStation 3’s retail price will be $399.
However according to Gamespot’s coverage of the paper, the unit will cost $494 to manufacture.
So Sony will be taking an almost $1 Billion loss in the first year of the PS3.
They think it is normal for game companies to take a loss on hardware whenever a new console launches, since they typically focus on acquiring market share rather than generating a profit during the first year. During the second year and afterward, they can recover the losses with the savings that come from mass production and with licensing fees from publishers.

Link to Gamespot’s article

Ron’s comment:
So this show manufacturers’ pricing can be so different, even not to cover, the manufacturing cost. With different expectations, Sony accepts losses for the first year. However on a product like PS3, it will have a high demand from the gamers in the first year and ppl would buy PS3 even it is $500 or $600.
Balancing quick market penetration and future long term sales to today’s losses of a $1 billion should not be an easy decision even for Sony.

Sony can’t stop PSP porn

Harun Yayli — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 21:53:16 +0000

“It is utterly undesirable, but we cannot stop software makers from selling such videos,” a public relations official at Sony Computer Entertainment said. The hand-held PlayStation uses the universal media disc, or UMD, format, enabling the console to play games or videos recorded on optical discs 2.3 inches in diameter”

From Top Tech News