UMD is here to stay

PSP marketing boss John Koller insists the Universal Media Disc (UMD) format is here to stay, and that Sony would never "walk away" from its user base.

Speaking to Pocket Gamer he stood by Sony's design decisions - despite criticisms of poor playback quality and lengthy loading times - and was confident the disc would perform well in the future.

"UMD possesses many strengths, from size to form, factor to portability," Koller told Pocket Gamer. "Duplication is much easier and cheaper than on cartridges; we've really optimised time and cost by going with a disc-based format."

"The future of UMD is bright. Whether it's movies or game content, third parties have an incredible opportunity to utilise it."

But it isn't all sunshine and Pimms in the park, as Castlevania series creator Koji Igarashi reckons potential developers are being put off by the seemingly problematic loading times of UMD.

"The slowness of the seeking speed of UMD is a weakness," said Igarashi. "To tell the truth, I was a little worried at first because I was told that the loading time was long when I started working on PSP."

"[But] We can overcome [loading times] by technique - it is the programmers' chance to show what he can do."

We'll remember that next time we scream at our PSP.