Shiny Prez: UMD Is Worthless

[x3sphere]

Shiny Entertainment's head honcho David Perry believes that UMD is worthless and that Sony should ditch the format entirely.

Speaking in a recent interview, Perry said that Sony should turn to a download-only handheld and get rid of UMD. This would result in a much smaller form factor and since the PSP already has extensive WiFi capabilities, users would be allowed to download digital versions of UMD games they already own and of course download future titles straight from a service similar to PSN.

Why hasn't Sony done it? Perry strongly believes that the retail chain is holding them back.

[blockquote2]The truth is, the stores will not carry PSPs unless they feel they are going to get a piece of the action on the back end. And Sony has not come up with an innovative business model that can support that concept.[/blockquote2]

UMD a waste of time and money, says Perry [GI.biz]

 

[Cheezeball99]

It's a good concept, but it would never work, IMO.

 

[canadajames]

They are supposedly introducing that either way though would makie pirating even easier I'd think.

 

[almadawarrior]

i don't think so, the games even if downloaded are encrypted and even after decrypted they wont load in a psp running OFW, and sony just helped the scene, by giving us an official iso loader, that is compatible with all psp games (m33 created their own driver and it works pretty well though)

 

[Chilly Willy]

The problem is (and will be for the foreseeable future) that you can't download a 1 to 2 GB game over the net in a reasonable amount of time. You want a Sony PSP game? Walk into WalMart and plunk down $20 - $50. You've got your game in only a few minutes. You want to download the same game? Get ready to wait two hours... and hope that nothing happens to corrupt the download. Downloading games is fine - for small games. That's why demos are downloaded. They're small enough that you can do that. A full size game can't be done the same way in an economically sound manner (i.e., people will spend that long to get it for FREE, but not pay $40 for it).

When the head honcho for a software distributor says they want downloaded games, what he's saying is they want to put less effort into the game for the same money. Why make a 1.5GB UMD when you can make a 300MB download instead? It's just greed talking. If he TRULY didn't like UMD, he'd be saying that Sony should switch to read-only memstick games. You can even put more on a memstick than on the UMD, and it would beat downloading hands down.

That's what intelligent people expect Sony to do at some point - drop the UMD and go with just the memstick. Sony does have MagicGate in the sticks for protection. So far, it's not getting much use.

 

[almadawarrior]

psp battery life would last longer if sony did that

 

[MenaceInc]

good points about the memory sticks and such but that model was used in the ngage and look how that turned out....it was a good console i thought but i got more out of it with homebrew/non-retail software than i did with the official MMC games.

 

[Cheezeball99]

good points about the memory sticks and such but that model was used in the ngage and look how that turned out....it was a good console i thought but i got more out of it with homebrew/non-retail software than i did with the official MMC games.

You mean like I already do with the PSP? Yeah, N-Gage, honestly, deserved better than what it got- owned. But I do think the memstick game idea would be good, although the read speeds from a memstick aren't nearly as high as a UMD.

 

[MenaceInc]

You mean like I already do with the PSP? Yeah, N-Gage, honestly, deserved better than what it got- owned. But I do think the memstick game idea would be good, although the read speeds from a memstick aren't nearly as high as a UMD.

really?...i thought the memory stick was read at a higher rate than the UMD?.....

 

[Cheezeball99]

really?...i thought the memory stick was read at a higher rate than the UMD?.....

I may be mistaken on that one... In fact, I probably am. My bad, I swear I heard that somewhere, but now I can't find it. Ah well, you win.:smile:

 

[almadawarrior]

although the read speeds from a memstick aren't nearly as high as a UMD
lol, really
iso loading is faster than UMD loading, it's a fact

 

[Chilly Willy]

really?...i thought the memory stick was read at a higher rate than the UMD?.....

They are. The maximum rated data rate on the UMD is 12 Mbits per second. This means that the BEST read speed you can get from the UMD is just a smidge over 1 MB/sec. Most sticks easily beat that.

When people have speed issues with ISOs, it tends to be for one of two reasons: the biggest is the stick is formatted as FAT32 instead of FAT16. It makes a BIG difference to the speed. Always format the stick as FAT16. The second reason is the ISO is fragmented. FAT formatted volumes get fragmented easily. You'll have pieces of files scattered all over the volume. You need to defragment FAT volumes periodically. For the PSP, the easiest way to key stuff unfragmented is to format the stick, copy the stuff on and never remove anything.

 

[MenaceInc]

They are. The maximum rated data rate on the UMD is 12 Mbits per second. This means that the BEST read speed you can get from the UMD is just a smidge over 1 MB/sec. Most sticks easily beat that.

When people have speed issues with ISOs, it tends to be for one of two reasons: the biggest is the stick is formatted as FAT32 instead of FAT16. It makes a BIG difference to the speed. Always format the stick as FAT16. The second reason is the ISO is fragmented. FAT formatted volumes get fragmented easily. You'll have pieces of files scattered all over the volume. You need to defragment FAT volumes periodically. For the PSP, the easiest way to key stuff unfragmented is to format the stick, copy the stuff on and never remove anything.

seriously?...FAT16 is faster?....didnt know that...what does the PSP format to by default?

 

[x3sphere]

seriously?...FAT16 is faster?....didnt know that...what does the PSP format to by default?

Yeah, FAT16 is faster. I believe the PSP formats all sticks below 4GB to FAT16. 4GB or higher and it uses FAT32.

 

[TimTiger]

Yeah, FAT16 is faster. I believe the PSP formats all sticks below 4GB to FAT16. 4GB or higher and it uses FAT32.

Your system has to format like that since the biggest FAT16 can handle is 2GB.

 

[Cheezeball99]

Well that sucks, I have a 4GB... Oh well, I don't have to worry about it then. Anyway, yeah, I'm an idiot, and I concede to defeat with the whole 'UMD is faster' thing. I was way off.

 

[Chilly Willy]

Your system has to format like that since the biggest FAT16 can handle is 2GB.

Not quite true... while the normal maximum cluster size is 32K, that is only due to idiots who tend to do signed shorts for the cluster number. The cluster is actually an UNSIGNED short and can be 64K, making the maximum size for FAT16 4GB. If the FAT code is properly written, it should handle 4GB FAT16 partitions. WNT and W98 were the first versions of Windows to support 4GB FAT16.

I don't remember if the PSP has proper FAT16 support or not. :confused1:

 

[MenaceInc]

Not quite true... while the normal maximum cluster size is 32K, that is only due to idiots who tend to do signed shorts for the cluster number. The cluster is actually an UNSIGNED short and can be 64K, making the maximum size for FAT16 4GB. If the FAT code is properly written, it should handle 4GB FAT16 partitions. WNT and W98 were the first versions of Windows to support 4GB FAT16.

I don't remember if the PSP has proper FAT16 support or not. :confused1:

hmm...well i'd go by this....\/ \/

Yeah, FAT16 is faster. I believe the PSP formats all sticks below 4GB to FAT16. 4GB or higher and it uses FAT32.