Bandai to Ship UMD and DVD Discs Together

Anime publisher Bandai has announced that they will be shipping UMD and DVD discs together for some of their releases, and GamesIndustry.biz has the tale. From the article: "Brand new anime series Eureka 7, which has been created by the team behind the hugely successful RahXephon, will be the first to get the treatment - with a single box housing both UMD and DVD, for slightly more than the price of buying both separately." UMD stands for Universal Media Disc, and is the proprietary format that Sony uses for the PSP.

Heh

[brotherscrim]

"with a single box housing both UMD and DVD, for slightly more than the price of buying both separately."

Wow, what a deal.

Slightly More???

[alta]

I hope you mean they are going to sell them for slightly less, or not to many people are going to buy them together...

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[account_deleted]

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Heck! Give It A Shot...

[blueZhift]

Except for the weird pricing, this might be worth a shot. If buying the double disc version is really more than buying both separately (which I doubt will remain the case) then I hope there are more extras thrown in to make it worthwhile. In any case, episodic content, like a TV anime series, is a good fit for the PSP and UMD media if DVDs ship with the UMD versions. I can see commuters and students wanting to catch an episode of their favorite series on the train or during lunch in the park.

The problem I see for TV episodes on UMD is that a lot of TV is already available online for download which means why bother with UMD when you can put shows on a memory stick. Right now most TV show downloads are illegal, but eventually legal services will pop up which will make the UMD even less attractive for TV content. Still, my guess is that downloads won't have the extras that can be placed on a disc, so there may still be a niche for UMD to thrive in. The trick and fun here is that this is all terra incognita, no one knows how the market is going to develop!

Re:So...

[BrookHarty]

Sounds more like false advertising, its not universal is it.