John Koller, senior marketing manager at Sony responsible for the PlayStation Portable, says that the "future of UMD is bright" and that the company won't walk away from the format. While UMD movies failed to light a fire under consumers and complaints about long load times for games abound, Koller says the format "possesses many strengths" including cheap manufacturing costs.

So what about that rumored PSP redesign? And the PlayStation Store for the PSP? Koller didn't comment in his discussion with UK game site Pocket Gamer, but it appears that those two additions to the platform won't have a significant impact (yet). We'll see how Sony fares with both of these potential changes, but with UMD movie sales actually up, I expect we'll be dealing with the proprietary format for many years to come.

We'll never walk away from UMD, says Sony's John Koller [Pocket Gamer]

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