Blockbuster chooses Blu-ray only for expanded rental availablity

BTW, here is Universal's & HD DVD's response:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/06/21/hd_dvd_shrugs_off_blockbuster_move/1

snippet:

Bit Tech said:
HD DVD shrugs off Blockbuster move
Author: Tim Smalley
Published: 21st Jun 2007

The HD DVD Promotional Group isn't fazed by Blockbuster's move to expand its Blu-ray rentals to another 1450 stores, while not expanding HD DVD.
During a briefing with UK press in London yesterday, Ken Graffeo, executive vice president of High Definition Strategic Marketing for Universal Studios and co-president of the HD DVD Promotional Group, shrugged off Blockbuster’s move to expand Blu-ray to 1450 new stores in America.

Graffeo pointed out that rental counted for less than one percent of its revenue and brushed it off as an insignificant event in the format war.

Ken cited the fact that HD DVD is still being offered in the original 250 stores and through Blockbuster’s online rental service. He claims that those 250 stores are stores where there are large numbers of early adopters and the latter, he believes, is Blockbuster’s major growth market.

Thus, he is not fazed by Blockbuster’s decision. In fact, we’d go so far as to say that this is potentially a bigger win for Blu-ray than it is a loss for HD DVD, based on the figures he’s given to us.

He remained adamant that HD DVD was on top at the moment and claimed that dedicated HD DVD set top boxes are outselling Blu-ray set top boxes at a rate of three to one in the US. In the last six weeks, the Promotional Group has sold over 50,000 HD DVD set top boxes on promotion in the US, proving that once the price is right, consumers will buy into the technology.
 
I'm not clear whether those 150,000 standalone HD-DVD players were sold worldwide or only in the US (and some quick googleing didn't help). If it's only in the US then the PS3 has only sold about 1.2 million there and I thought the advantage was 3:1 now. It's 2:1 LTD but the trending heavily favors Bluray, which implies that the effect of PS3 in Bluray sales is significant. Especially considering BD standalone players have sold far less that HD-DVD ones.


Edit: I forgot to add that they're not counting the 360 add-on in their sales. IIRC it's the highest selling HD-DVD player (but it's not standalone) which I think it's well over 150,000 in the US alone. So the attach BD attach ratio for PS3 is looking a lot better.
PS3 had a bigger effect earlier in the year, probably because the hardware ratio was even higher then, and some PS3 owners may have bought a disc for the heck of it. The first quarter was nearly 3:1 in disc sales.

Since then it's been closer. A couple weeks ago it was 60/40. Generally it's been less than 2:1. So no, the trending does not heavily favor BluRay.

If you're right about this only talking about north america, this article states the opposite of your claim about the 360 add-on, saying they are counted but PS3's aren't. I still think there's around a 10:1 hardware advantage for PS3/BluRay vs. HD-DVD, whether it's 3M versus a few hundred thousand worldwide, or 1.x million versus 150,000 in North America. The attach ratio doesn't look very good at all for PS3.

SPM, I don't buy your scenario. We're not going to see a high percentage of existing PS3 owners buy HDTV's and buy lots of discs before standalone player owners start dominating disc sales. For one thing, if they were planning on buying an HDTV soon, they would already be buying BluRay. It's just wishful thinking to think they'll suddenly explode as buyers.

It's going to be like PS2 and DVD, except with far lower sales (from both the console and the standalones). The console just isn't going to have a very large impact on disc sales beyond the short term.

Now, I'm not saying HD-DVD will win. Sony can still beat them in standalone sales this year because, well, it's Sony. Right now it doesn't look particularly likely, though.
 
I was thinking of the numbers from this article, I just couldn't find it before.

DEG says the 1.5 million Blu-ray homes include about 100,000 standalone Blu-ray players with the rest PlayStation 3 game consoles.

The research firm says there 300,000 HD DVD homes in the United States -- evenly split between standalone players and HD DVD XBox 360 attachment drives

So the ratio is only 5:1 in favor of Blu-ray which means their attach rates were twice as good as you were saying :p If you substract the 100,000 standalones asuming similar buying patters between both camps you get: 1.4 million PS3 are comparable to 250,000 standalones (I count the 360 add-on as standalone since it's bought exclusively to play movies). That means that 5.6 PS3 buy as much as 1 standalone HD-DVD player. Even if PS3 sales continue at its snail pace it should still sell considerable more than 6 times what HD-DVD standalones can manage, plus with whatever standalones BD sells... I just see the gap widening and widening. Also your comparison with PS2 is highly flawed, since PS2 was an average player at best (crappy by most standards) whereas PS3 is top of the line and an AV enthusiast should, at least, give it some serious consideration.

I really think you're underestimating the effect the PS3's troyan horse effect can have in the war. By the time the movies people are really waiting for come out what do you think is gonna happen? People with PS3s picking up a cheaper HD-DVD player or just using the machine they already have (and can muster enough quality) to watch them. Hell I've only bought one movie, because the ones I really want haven't been released yet. I imagine a lot of PS3 users feel the same. This is not even considering other regions like Japan where HD-DVD standalones sales are pretty much inexistent.
 
I was talking about worldwide, and I don't think HD-DVD standalones are doing well at all outside North America (though BluRay probably isn't much better). Sony said they shipped 5.5M PS3's, right? I don't think any of my numbers were unreasonable.

Anyway, I don't think PS3 can get close to 5.6 times the sales of HD-DVD players in NA. Toshiba is estimating 1M players for the year, and PS3 is chugging along at 100k units a month. Even if we assume 2M PS3's this holiday season (and I think that's generous given the competition, especially this year in terms of price and games), it's going to fall far short.

The gap is only going to widen if Sony can move a lot of standalones. If Sony is willing to lose $100M or so by subsidizing standalones, though, then I guess they can.
 
The gap is only going to widen if Sony can move a lot of standalones. If Sony is willing to lose $100M or so by subsidizing standalones, though, then I guess they can.

That's chump change in this war, given the long term implications and dollars involved. I don't know that they will do it, necessarily, but I think they'd be idiots not to if it's necessary. Sony is the one player in this "war" that really can't afford to just shrug their shoulders when it gets a little tough, say "oh well, we gave it a go", and then fold up their B-r tents.
 
How about if Sony debuts their own "buy a Blu-Ray player and get five free BDs" promo--and a PS3 qualifies? :)

They can't be losing too much on those titles, especially if you have to pay shipping, but it's not a bad nudge for the buyer on the brink.
 
Hmm. What is BD+? Will old players support it? If they don't, what does that mean? That they can't play the new BD+ titles from Fox?

Regarding the 5 movie B-r promo, I looked at the list and the only thing I saw that I wanted to add to my permenent collection was Blazing Saddles. Everything else was either "seen it once, and once was enuf" or "not interested".
 
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