"With sales falling below expectations, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Paramount Home Entertainment and Warner Home Video are cutting back on movie releases for the PSP," reports Variety.
"While comedies that appeal to the core young male gamer demo are doing well, execs say other PSP movies simply aren't selling."
There's an obvious problem: people don't want to pay for big bucks movies in a non-standard disc format they can't use anywhere else, so it makes more sense to buy a DVD that will play on any DVD player, a PC, PlayStation or Xbox. The article says Sony is "touting a new adapter that would allow a user to watch a PSP pic on a TV," which would help, but probably isn't enough.
The less obvious problem is shelf space in retailers. The article says:
"With standard definition, HD DVD, Blu-ray and PSP, all these formats take up space," said one retail source. "Consumers aren't going to buy three or four configurations of the same movie. Something has to give."
It makes more sense to download PSP movies and just delete them after you've watched them. But the studios will have to come up with something that makes it attractive to download and pay for content instead of just getting it from a peer-to-peer network, so don't hold your breath.
