As previously mentioned, The Blu-ray Disc Association has been claiming victory in the format war stating their sales are 3:1 compared to HD DVD. At the consumer electronics show CeBit this week, Toshiba Europe has categorized these claims as propaganda.

Olivier Van Wynendaele, Deputy General Manager of HD DVD for Toshiba stated that the Blu-ray sales figures included the redeemed vouchers given to new PS3 owners to receive a free movie and is not a true representation of actual sales. According to Van Wynendaele, Toshiba has sold 200,000 players versus 30,000 “true” Blu-ray players, and the 2 million PS3 sold should not be included in the sales figures of hardware. He also stated “that neither format could claim victory when high def player sales accounted for less than 1% of regular DVD player sales.”

These are all valid points. One could argue though that the reason there are more PS3 sales than stand alone Blu-ray players is because of price and duality. But if there are 2 million PS3 owners that are using the game console to watch Blu-ray movies, they must be watching the same movie over and over again. Blu-ray movie sales are nowhere near the amount they would need to be in order to make the claim that all PS3 owners buy Blu-ray movies.

An interesting side note to Sony’s “victory” is Samsung’s voiced willingness to work with the competitor. According to Stephen Mitchell, marketing manager with Samsung Electronics “We think Blu-ray is the stronger of the two; however we aren’t ruling HD DVD out yet.”

Now isn’t that an intriguing statement coming from one of Sony’s original supporters in the Blu-ray format. I guess Samsung didn’t get the memo that Sony has already won.

Mitchell went on to say, “We could launch a hybrid player or a Blu-ray recorder tomorrow, but until we see what other manufacturers are doing we are not going to be announcing anything.”

As with every twist and turn in this format saga, it becomes increasingly obvious that the public relations departments of the respective formats are working harder than the potential buyers, tune in next time for as-the-formats-turn.

R.Hollis

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 2:41 pm and is filed under HD-DVD news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.