A new
article by Video Business trade magazine is Friday's story by Susanne Ault and Jennifer Netherby titled "PSP Loses Support." In it, these reporters say that the studios are scaling back their UMD releases for the Sony PSP handheld videogame system. Both films and TV shows were quite successful early on in the release of the PlayStation Portable, but now - after a year's passing - the folks at Universal, New Line and Paramount have no plans for this format on their current schedule, according to the
VB story. It also goes on to explain how retailers like Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Circuit City are all scaling back the amount of shelf space they give to UMD's. And it's no wonder, with new upcoming formats for Hi-Def coming along such as HD-DVD and Blu-ray coming along that promise to earn more money for both studios and retailers than the PSP's proprietary UMD format currently rakes in.
Nevertheless, there are still UMD titles coming to market, and while most of them are for film, a group of TV Shows On PSP are coming out in the near future...eight of them! The BBC is doing the vast majority of these in the United States, with 7 different titles coming out on
July 4th:
- Doctor Who - The Complete 1st Season: Volume 1
- Doctor Who - The Complete 1st Season: Volume 2
- Doctor Who - The Complete 1st Season: Volume 3
- Doctor Who - The Complete 1st Season: Volume 4
- The Office (UK) - The Complete 1st Series
- Little Britain - The Complete 1st Series
- Little Britain - The Complete 2nd Series
The
Doctor Who releases are the Christopher Eccleston/Billie Piper revival series from 2005, with the 13 episodes from that first season broken up into 4 different UMD releases for the PSP. Then there is Ricky Gervais's original UK version of
The Office, the inspiration for NBC's American version starring Steve Carell: now you can take the hilarity of paper company Wernham Hogg with you wherever you go! Finally there are also two seasons (or, we should say, series) of
Little Britain, a small and surreal parallel universe peopled by over-the-top eccentrics, lunatics and social misfits...it's called by the BBC as "the reigning king of UK comedy." Warner Home Video is distributing these releases, and their information shows a $27.95 SRP for these titles (well, they contradict themselves on three of the
Doctor Who listings as being $19.95 SRP, but we think that's a typo on a few of the listings). We would love to bring you cover art for the BBC titles, but unfortunately the only artwork available right now is the Region 2 (European) versions. But we have artwork on the final TV Show On PSP we talk about today:
The
Video Business article mentions that one of the strongest sellers on PSP is
Family Guy, which hasn't been lost on the folks at Fox Home Entertainment. So they are putting out a Volume 2 release on UMD. Expect this one to ship on
September 19th. We're not sure if the listing at Fox's press site is correct, but if it is then you can expect a 4-disc release consisting of all of the third season episodes (21 of them, including "When You Wish Upon A Weinstein") - and bonus material (including featurettes, commentary tracks, and trailers) - that were on the "Volume 2" DVD release! Price shown is $49.98 SRP in the USA and CA$69.98 SRP in Canada. Will this really be a 4-UMD package, or is this just another mix-up? Well, we'll let you know if we find out. Stay tuned!
