Sony sells Memory Sticks with movies ... so it does work then?

I'm starting to believe there are Nintendo, Apple and Microsoft spies working for Sony.

This is a joke right?

Waaaaaaaaay too little Waaaaaaaaaaaaay too late.

Put one DVD you didn't want to buy in the first place onto ANOTHER propriety format. I'm sorry....That's not even trying. UMD failed for movies. Get over it. Now unless you want your PSP to fail too, let us play all the movies we want.

... triple x, swat, the grudge, hitch...... all those movies make me not want to buy a memory stick. not that i need one but if i did i'll pass.

I'll wait until they get the online network up and going in the fall. If they don't completely screw it up, you'll be able to download movies on to your PS3 and transfer or stream to your PSP at full resolution. I have a feeling that's why they haven't made it easy to transfer your own movies to the thing and limiting resolution.

Most people have probably already pirated those movies buy now. Ha!

Todd
http://www.proplaystation.com

Eww, do I have to pick one of those movies? What they need to do is make the larger memory sticks more affordable. Push out some affordable (read cheaper than the PSP itself) 4 & 8 gig sticks.

Todd H.

Are those articles on proplaystation.com serious or are they supposed to be sarcastic?

Sony has some of the best ideas but hands down the worst implementation of them

What was the middle part again?

Donny K: Agreed.

They just don't get it, do they?

Wow, I wonder how I could get a job doing market research at Sony. Their complete cluelessness about what customers actually want is amazing and seems to be consistent across their entire product line. 20+ years of continuously trying to force proprietary formats on us and failing.

What was wrong with UMD, already?

Maybe they want psp owners to buy big memory cards, to later sell videos online...

Darth Pixel: You mean besides the antiquated business model of buying physical media, the battery draining disc, the fact they're *WAY* overpriced, have no functionality outside the PSP, etc. etc.?

Really, are you playing devil's advocate here?

Sony has reserved the ability to play full resolution 480x272 video from Memory Stick. Some of the video files you can download from Playstation Underground do it, so apparently it requires a special code in the header or something. It isn't a hard inviolate firmware design but apparenty the hackers haven't cracked it yet.

#6 Belcho, the prices aren't necessarily something Sony controls. While Memory Stick carries a small premium over more common formats (SD) or those with physically greater volume that make it easier to stuff in the chips (CF), the prices have dropped steadily since the PSP launched and increased the user base for Memory Stick practically overnight. The increased market helps but they're still constrained by the same flash memory costs as any other format.

When the PSP launched peopel would excitedly tell each other when they found a 1GB card for under $100. Today, no informed shopper would pay more than $40 after rebate and better deals are frequent. The 2GB card I use was only $60 after rebate. I expect by this time next year I'll have no problem buying a 4GB unit for under $100 if doesn't already happen by the coming Xmas shopping season.

Look, it's an expensive, complicated, time-consuming way to watch one of four mediocre movies on your PSP - who says Sony is hopelessly clueless?

So something I learned in social psych is that when you offer something cheap that people don't want, it actually decreases the percieved value of the deal.

People are more likely to buy a TV if it comes with a free cruise than a TV that comes with a free cruise and a toaster.

This is silly behavior, but it's how people generally work. I'm predicting that Sony doesn't sell many of these memory sticks.

...

I 'rented' triple X, only because I noticed blockbuster had a whole empty shelf of "Rent this movie for free if we don't have it in stock"... I didn't care what movie it was. I guess on the whole, I don't regret seeing it... it was free, and now I have a amusing (yeah right) annecdote to relate. It makes me sad that it was sold out though. Humanity is doomed.

My 2GB Memory stick was $45 on ebay. Why the hell would I go for a 1GB that costs more with annoying stipulations?

They are not even trying. First you have to buy the specific memory stick, which already costs you 60-100 dollars... and now you can't even watch all 4 of those (crappy) movies included? And let me guess, you can't even download your own movies into the memorystick to playback.

Congrats Sony, you've won the gaming war again. You're the genius of it all. Face it, that's why Nintendo's DS lite is doing so well and PSP is doing dipshit. No consideration for customers whatsoever.

@14

Cool down, I was just asking a question... :)

The way I see it, events occurred this way:

Sony:

1. What media should we use for our portable system? Nintendo uses some kind of proprietary flash memory. It works well for them, but we would want something more multimedia.
2. If we go with some proprietary optical media, like Nintendo did with GameCube, we will be able to distribute our games, audio, video content and even applications.
3. Let's go with that.

The way the public perceived Sony's move:

1. OMG, $ony wants us to rebuy our movies on UMD discs!!! At FULL price!!! OMG111
2. OMG, OMG, $ony is trying to conquer the world with another proprietary format!!!

In other words, I think they just picked a media that would cover all types of content they wanted to make available to their portable system.
An optical media may have been a bad choice for a portable system, but nothing is perfect. For instance, DS' carts are not that great for anything but games.

This sounds like a last ditch effort to salvage the UMD format.

Sony should have offered this solution from the beginning, but with software to make the process painless.

That they continue to miss opportunties to this day really surprises me.

Of all the consoles and portables I own, I have to admit, I use the PSP the least. I think they had a good idea and design, but just executed the whole thing poorly.

Don't forget Jonny's PMP mod, a constantly-updated, open-source homebrew program that allows you to transcode and playback your very own videos at 480x272! Yet another reason to stay at firmware 1.5

So if you plug the Memory Stick into a PC or laptop, can you also play the video?

FYI, despite what "1337 haxors" can find for memory stick pro duo prices, Best Buy and other big electronic chains charge $60 for a 1GB card.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=6730424&type=product&id=1083716073008

So basically Sony is giving you a free movie for the same price as a regular card. What the heck are people complaining about?

Ok, we get it... all you people who have hated on the PSP and the UMD format since day one. UMD didn't work as a movie format. Sony appears to be trying something new with this memory stick thing. So what are people complaining about?

One last thing-- if the Joystiq staffer who wrote this article is truly "baffled" by the "arcane" file system of a PSP, maybe they should step down and allow someone else to take their job.

I love Hitch!

That link to Best Buy is for a regular memory stick, the PSP uses a memory stick duo.... $70 from BB, but you can find a 2 GB for about the same price if you shop around (and you don't even have to be a 1337 haxor).

UMD and Blew Ray both blow. The load times with UMD is insane. I knew it was a mistake.

Memory stick - here is another one. Who uses it? All my other devices use industry standard / accepted "SD" media. SD also offers better performance, higher capacities and much much lower costs.

Backward companies like Sony are hopelessly out of date and out of touch. They need to fix quality controls first - Read 2 x Class actions for crap PS2 DVD drives. Now they want to push onto consumers a Blew ray drive? Funny. Pathetic.