Do you think UMD will become an open format?

[noiseredux]

I've been thinking about this. There are still some UMD's coming out this year, so it's not dead yet. And PSP-3000 is still available. But it does seem that Sony is phasing them out in the US. (They still seem quite popular in Japan, probably because pr0n is distributed on UMD there. Hear that Sony? You should've made pr0n a higher US priority! Learn something from VHS and DVD formats, will ya?) ANYWAY, I'm curious if anyone thinks the UMD will become an open format after being phased out. I know that only hobbyists and indie publishers will be interested in having access to UMD burners and making their own releases, but it would be really cool to see.

[fastbilly1]

Very doubtful - theres not that much of a market for it (atleast that is my understanding).

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

Access to burners and everything is great, but who will provide them with the blank media?

Sony is notorious for being extremely insane about keeping their formats private and proprietary. The only ones I can remember them licensing were the CD (as it was jointly developed by Philips and several other companies), Cassette (Type III which was a miserable overpriced failure), Floppy Diskette, Betamax (far too late in it's life cycle after VHS had already captured 90% of the market) and MiniDisc (also at the point where it had started to hit it's death bed).

Sony's a company led by lots of members from the old guard who never really saw it fit for a large unified format or sales structure. To them proprietary devices and formats that lock you exclusively to Sony products are more important than having said devices themselves compete with others based on their build quality and reliability.

[noiseredux]

I feel like there would be in a niche way. Like say if most games just became PSN titles, but then some indie publishers would release their games ALSO as like deluxe edition UMD's with a soundtrack, book, etc. Similar to what Working Design did with PS1 (Lunar, Arc The Lad, etc) even after PS2 was out.

[noiseredux]

Access to burners and everything is great, but who will provide them with the blank media?

Sony is notorious for being extremely insane about keeping their formats private and proprietary. The only ones I can remember them licensing were the CD (as it was jointly developed by Philips and several other companies), Cassette (Type III which was a miserable overpriced failure), Floppy Diskette, Betamax (far too late in it's life cycle after VHS had already captured 90% of the market) and MiniDisc (also at the point where it had started to hit it's death bed).

Sony's a company led by lots of members from the old guard who never really saw it fit for a large unified format or sales structure. To them proprietary devices and formats that lock you exclusively to Sony products are more important than having said devices themselves compete with others based on their build quality and reliability.

Sony may open up PSP UMD format
By Dan Wu posted January 21st 2005 7:32AM

PSPSo the control freaks at Sony might take a big step and do something smart: allow other manufacturers to use the PlayStation Portable's Universal Media Disc (UMD) in their own devices. Other companies would not be able to play PSP games on their machines—that will be exclusive to the PSP, of course—but obviously Sony thinks they have a shot at making the UMD a popular format for music and videos on portable devices. They'd be opening up the format to potential piracy (since they'd inevitably have less control over the discs' use, as well as their manufacture and distribution), but loosening the reins is really the only way they're going to put the "universal" in "Universal Media Disc," right? If they really want to impress they'd take the next logical step and sell UMD recorders that would let consumers burn their own movies, music, and yes, even games to the discs, but we probably shouldn't get ahead of ourselves.

http://www.engadget.com/2005/01/21/sony ... md-format/

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

Access to burners and everything is great, but who will provide them with the blank media?

Sony is notorious for being extremely insane about keeping their formats private and proprietary. The only ones I can remember them licensing were the CD (as it was jointly developed by Philips and several other companies), Cassette (Type III which was a miserable overpriced failure), Floppy Diskette, Betamax (far too late in it's life cycle after VHS had already captured 90% of the market) and MiniDisc (also at the point where it had started to hit it's death bed).

Sony's a company led by lots of members from the old guard who never really saw it fit for a large unified format or sales structure. To them proprietary devices and formats that lock you exclusively to Sony products are more important than having said devices themselves compete with others based on their build quality and reliability.

Sony may open up PSP UMD format
By Dan Wu posted January 21st 2005 7:32AM

PSPSo the control freaks at Sony might take a big step and do something smart: allow other manufacturers to use the PlayStation Portable's Universal Media Disc (UMD) in their own devices. Other companies would not be able to play PSP games on their machines—that will be exclusive to the PSP, of course—but obviously Sony thinks they have a shot at making the UMD a popular format for music and videos on portable devices. They'd be opening up the format to potential piracy (since they'd inevitably have less control over the discs' use, as well as their manufacture and distribution), but loosening the reins is really the only way they're going to put the "universal" in "Universal Media Disc," right? If they really want to impress they'd take the next logical step and sell UMD recorders that would let consumers burn their own movies, music, and yes, even games to the discs, but we probably shouldn't get ahead of ourselves.

http://www.engadget.com/2005/01/21/sony ... md-format/

Sony says that about every single format they've ever made.

Also, that quote was from January 2005 when the PSP wasn't even out in America yet.

[noiseredux]

yeah, I was just pointing out that it has at least been considered.

Plus they did make the PS2 an open format in Brazil (it was Brazil right? Somewhere)

[jfrost]

They didn't. It's still a closed platform.

[noiseredux]

ah, not Brazil -- Europe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/ga ... opensource

PS2 is now an open-platform

Something I missed while away last week...

*
o
o Share
o Reddit
o Buzz up
*
Comments (3)

PS2 is open PS2 - Sony's standards have dropped. Literally.

Here's something quite intriguing from last week – just in case you missed it. SCEE has ceased the approvals process for PS2 games in Europe, effectively making the machine an open platform for software developers. The announcement was made by developer relations manager George Bain at the Casual Connect conference in Kiev. It seems Sony is mainly targeting regional developers in countries like India and Russia which will now be able to make, "low-development cost titles and release them in their market".

It could be quite a big deal for the indie development community too, though the ramifications are not yet entirely clear...

Presumably copy protection will still be in place, meaning that it won't be possible to distribute games on DVD-R discs, or via download. Oh and potential developers will also need a devt kit, which could set them back $10,250 – although Bain says a 500 quid debug unit would be fine for casual units. Perhaps the next step will be for Sony to make all its PS2 libraries and SDKs freely available to the bedroom coding community?

Still, it's an interesting development, which runs starkly counter to the company's treatment of the PSP homebrew scene, and recalls the days of Net Yaroze. Of course, it could just as easily mean a huge amount of unregulated shovelware/porn shoved out by low-end distributors, sniffing around the machine's vast installed user base…

[Hatta]

SCEE has ceased the approvals process for PS2 games in Europe, effectively making the machine an open platform for software developers.

I don't understand this part. If Sony is no longer approving games, then all games for the PS2 will be unapproved. How is this a good thing for third parties wanting to publish for the PS2? What was stopping people from publishing unapproved games before?