Blu-ray outselling HD DVD
Yes, there is truth in that statement. So this means that the format war is over, right? Well, not exactly. While Blu-ray sales have passed that of HD DVD this month, “the life-to-date title sales ratios”, according to Ken Graffeo of Universal, are at about 1:1. Graffeo who is the executive in charge of the HD DVD effort for Universal also questioned that “Blu-ray has a 5:1 ratio right now on the hardware side due to PS3, why aren’t’ Blu-ray software sales out-pacing HD DVD by a similar ratio?”
That is a good question. If the market is saturated with Blu-ray players 5:1 over HD DVD players, then the discs should be at or over that same ratio, that is if we’re to believe the 80% plus PS3 owners who according to Sony; indicated interest in Blu-ray movies from PS3 owners. Another point to bring up is the total amount of titles released by both camps so far. The quantity of Blu-ray titles that have been released up to January 2007 is 157, for HD DVD the number is 138. Also Blu-ray has released almost double that of HD DVD this month in titles, 35 to 19.
Since Blu-ray has more titles released and more hardware in the market compared to HD DVD, it seems like Sony should be dominating this format war. Well, according to Sony there is no more war because they have already won it. When the sales numbers barely reflect a win, 100 units of Blu-ray to every 98.71 units of HD DVD, the Toshiba camp isn’t going away anytime soon, apparently rumors of their demise were greatly exaggerated. Steve Nickerson who is senior vice president of market management for Warner stated, “We’re not in this for winning or losing. Both formats are selling well on software.”
R.Hollis
June 16th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Well, I wonder how long that’ll last now that people like me are finding that their EXPENSIVE Blu-ray discs are pitting, just like early DVDs did.
September 26th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
So my fundamental question in the ongoing next-gen wars between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray is that should a clear winner be decided, what happens for those consumers that have already purchased either format player? Understandable that of course there is no monetary reparation that can be made, but how about something in form of an exchange program to where if you were to bring in the losing format player perhaps a discount to change over to winning format player. Another part to this question, being that I own a Sony PS3 system and it is able to update the system info, is there a possiblity that there is a way to update the exisiting software that powers the Blu-Ray laser to support the HD-DVD format should God forbid Blu-Ray ends up on the losing end of this war for the consumer dollar?
February 12th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
So which one should I buy? So confusing.