Click to viewSony has thought about and continues to play around with the idea of building a Playstation Portable with a built in hard drive or internal memory, Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said this morning at a gather of game writers.
"I think we definitely thought about it," he said. "I think that's the trend moving forward."
With the recently announced ability to purchase movies on a Playstation 3 and move them over to a Playstation Portable, and as the cost of memory continues to drop, the chance that a new Playstation Portable would include some sort of internal storage option is becoming increasingly likely, Tretton said.
New of the push toward digitally distributed movies through the Playstation Store is also like to impact UMD's already flagging movie sales, he added.
"I think the UMD has struggled," he said. "And that's an understatement. That's been a very frustrating thing. I don't think (UMD movies) were handled very effectively."
He said it seemed that studios said "lets see if we can get people to pay $20 or $30 for crappy movies with less content."
Digital distributed movies, he said, is either going to supplement the UMD movie's struggle or be the "stake in the UMD's heart."