Movies on Flash Drives?

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has just announced a special product – The Michael Jackson’s THIS IS IT Movie Drive.  Nowadays, when one goes to buy a movie, there are several ways of doing so.  One can buy it at retail on DVD, Blu-Ray Disc, or UMD (the mini-disc format for use with the Sony PSP).  One could also stay at home and purchase it online, and then download it through the PlayStation Network, iTunes, or any other movie downloading service.

Sony has now thought of another way of doing it – loading a movie onto a USB flash drive and selling the movie as well as the drive itself.  This way consumers get a digital version of the movie without actually having to download it!  Plus, if one so chooses, they can remove the movie from the flash drive and then use the drive as they would normally.  Genius!

This particular example is obviously of Michael Jackson’s THIS IS IT (which if you haven’t seen yet you probably should), and the drive itself is produced by Kingston.  The USB drive is 2GB and comes with a 5-year warranty.  What makes this first attempt at selling movies on USB flash drives even more interesting is that Sony is marketing it as a “Limited Edition” model.  Supposedly ther will only be 75,000 of these drives produced, and each will be numbered individually.  Most importantly, the price is only $19.99!  Granted, it is the same Standard Definition quality as the DVD; not the Full HD quality of the Blu-Ray.  So, what do you think?  Is this really a great way to sell movies and will consumers buy into it?  Or will this just go down as another failed attempt to make consumers buy a product they don’t want or need? 

I personally think that if it is marketed correctly, it could be a hit!  Imagine just carrying this small USB drive with you, and if you want to watch THIS IS IT, just plug it into any PC or PS3 and hit play!  In addition, you can put other files on it as well!   It is specially branded for THIS IS IT so if you’re a fan of MJ, everyone will know  it with this USB drive!  Like I said, though, is that it needs to be well-marketed.  Most people probably will just buy the DVD because they won’t know what this even is!