Let's face it. The UMD is not really a very popular medium for people. It's struggling to make a profit, you could say, as its limited uses and high prices push consumers away from making purchases.

In Japan, however, the poor unloved UMD had Christmas early, as people actually started to buy universal media discs. After Warner Home Video opted to reduce prices for their UMD movies, sales of the discs went up tenfold! The UMD vids, which are now priced at 980 yen (around  $8.50) were only supposed to be marked down as part of a limited time sale. Warner decided to just keep the price down permanently.

It's a smart move to make it limited then permanent. People will think that this markdown is a godsend (or santasend) and buy more discs to suit their movie tastes because the high prices from before are still fresh in their mind. We wish they'd send that discount to other countries because the darned things, while cute, cost more than the usual Christmas gifts you buy for to family members you don't like and can barely tolerate (admit it, because it's bound to be true).

One last thing: Don't you think it's weird that they didn't offer numbers? There's this mental image of them selling only one a month with the old prices, so they still only sell 10 UMDs now... If any of you have actual numbers for the UMD sales, send us a tip, ok?