Blu-ray sales soar
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Sony predicted $1 billion in Blu-Ray software sales for 2008, that $760 million figure has to be a pretty big disappointment despite surpassing the conservative 10 million player estimates.
Means the PS3s that were sold aren't being used as much movie watching, in concert with the economy, the cost of the movies and relatively lackluster PS3-as-trojan-horse sales.
As I said in another thread, tentpole releases are going to be used to portray an overall health of the format when it's not as rosy as it could/should be, but the backers are still in profit-taking mode with these MSRPs so high. It's improving, but has a long ways to go. The Dark Knight is probably 10% of their sales for the year. 1 title. The only figure I could find for it's 2008 sales was from the week after it's release, it was already at 1.7m units sold... almost 7% of the annual BD sales. (though, some reports showing 1.7m as of 12/17.... others from after the new year reported by the BVA have it listed at 1.5m sold in December?)
Means the PS3s that were sold aren't being used as much movie watching, in concert with the economy, the cost of the movies and relatively lackluster PS3-as-trojan-horse sales.
As I said in another thread, tentpole releases are going to be used to portray an overall health of the format when it's not as rosy as it could/should be, but the backers are still in profit-taking mode with these MSRPs so high. It's improving, but has a long ways to go. The Dark Knight is probably 10% of their sales for the year. 1 title. The only figure I could find for it's 2008 sales was from the week after it's release, it was already at 1.7m units sold... almost 7% of the annual BD sales. (though, some reports showing 1.7m as of 12/17.... others from after the new year reported by the BVA have it listed at 1.5m sold in December?)
Blu Ray sales will pick up once prices drop to the sub $20 range. This is when sales on DVDs initially picked up. This repricing has already begun to happen. I've recently picked up a lot of discs at around $15 each. Pricing is especially important given the current state of the economy.
IIRC, a tripling of sales was about what was expected, outside of a few over-optimistic ones and a few with darker expectations.
Blu-ray is doing quite well, thank you. I'm sure it will do quite well next year as well, considering the economy- but a 5 or 6 fold increase seems quite incredible. Maybe it'll happen, with price drops. Maybe.
Blu-ray has already established itself as a long term player.
Blu-ray is doing quite well, thank you. I'm sure it will do quite well next year as well, considering the economy- but a 5 or 6 fold increase seems quite incredible. Maybe it'll happen, with price drops. Maybe.
Blu-ray has already established itself as a long term player.
The article states "U.S. consumers bought 28.6 million of them in the fourth quarter of 2008" so DK is much less than 7% of the annual BD sales.
Yup my mistake, though I'm not sure I'd call it much less, there's certainly a reason they only gave us Q4 numbers and not the whole year.
The sky is by no means falling, but it's certainly not as happy happy joy joy as they'd like you to believe at 3.4% of DVD sales over the same period, vs the forecast 4.6% by almost 25%. Sure, small numbers all around, unless the 3.4% is $760 million and the deficit is $240 million
Also, looks like DVD likely passed 10 billion units shipped in North America in 2008 according to this? That's spiffy - http://www.dvdinformation.com/industryData/index.cfm
The sky is by no means falling, but it's certainly not as happy happy joy joy as they'd like you to believe at 3.4% of DVD sales over the same period, vs the forecast 4.6% by almost 25%. Sure, small numbers all around, unless the 3.4% is $760 million and the deficit is $240 million
Also, looks like DVD likely passed 10 billion units shipped in North America in 2008 according to this? That's spiffy - http://www.dvdinformation.com/industryData/index.cfm
The full data is here, just wasn't included in the linked article:
DVD Entertainment Group
The 28.6m figure is on a graph labeled as shipments... but the article called these purchases... might this just be the amount of media sold to retailers, and not to consumers? (Like the figure Sony was reporting early in the PS3s life cycle when they couldn't move any units... instead they were reporting shipped rather than sales)
This jives with previous years as BD momentum increased and more titles were released... hence the 3x increase Q3-Q4, vs the 2x increase this year over the same period.
DVD Entertainment Group
The 28.6m figure is on a graph labeled as shipments... but the article called these purchases... might this just be the amount of media sold to retailers, and not to consumers? (Like the figure Sony was reporting early in the PS3s life cycle when they couldn't move any units... instead they were reporting shipped rather than sales)
This jives with previous years as BD momentum increased and more titles were released... hence the 3x increase Q3-Q4, vs the 2x increase this year over the same period.
Shipments = sales to the manufacturer until the returns start coming back. Manufacturer has no real way of knowing how much stock BB is carrying in inventory.
I think they're both public, it will depend on how they phrase their Q4 reports/filings I think?
Wife an I have made a resolution in 2009... the year of 'buying our first house' ... we're done buying movies and games. We've got Netflix and Gamefly, and it's long overdue that we use them as much as we should have been.
There will surely be exceptions, but it's one way of cutting back and "Doing more with less" (a core value at Zappos.com where we both work)
Wife an I have made a resolution in 2009... the year of 'buying our first house' ... we're done buying movies and games. We've got Netflix and Gamefly, and it's long overdue that we use them as much as we should have been.
There will surely be exceptions, but it's one way of cutting back and "Doing more with less" (a core value at Zappos.com where we both work
)
So the article appears incorrect then? 28.6 million units were shipped to retail, not sold to consumers as the article states?
Edit: I actually confirmed with The Digital Entertainment Group that the article's statement is incorrect and forwarded that confirmation to the AP. Wonder if it could actually get corrected? Absent actual consumer data, I'm not sure the article could be written the way it was, outside of a general retailer demand for Blu-Ray standpoint?
Edit: I actually confirmed with The Digital Entertainment Group that the article's statement is incorrect and forwarded that confirmation to the AP. Wonder if it could actually get corrected? Absent actual consumer data, I'm not sure the article could be written the way it was, outside of a general retailer demand for Blu-Ray standpoint?
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Despite all the bad press that Blu-ray got over the last year concerning its death, it did exceptionally well over the holiday season (as actually expected by the studios- I've been working with WHV on some blu-ray projects and they werent worried). I think a lot of it really just comes back to bloggers not wanting to eat crow on their predictions. Sorry, but there is no other true high def format around as of yet that can compete. Blu-ray is here to stay,
While all that may be true, we don't know how well it did, just how many retailers put on shelves.
Any product doubling or tripling it's sales in a year is in pretty good shape.
BTW, thanks for the comment about Zappos. I'd never heard of them. I see they carry 10A shoes, which are hard to find. Florsheims, no less. Now I have 3 sources for my shoes.
BTW, thanks for the comment about Zappos. I'd never heard of them. I see they carry 10A shoes, which are hard to find. Florsheims, no less. Now I have 3 sources for my shoes.
While my wife and I were at Costco's getting our eyes check we counted 7 HDTV's that went out the door in 1 1/2 hours. Three of them were accompanied by a BD player as best I could tell. I think that BD is doing quite well and 2009 will be a very good year for BD. Especially with player prices coming down. Now they need to drop the BD movie prices down to the $19 to $25 dollar range for new releases. If they would do that you might see a five fold increase in sales for 2009. Keep prices where they are at and a 2 fold increase might be hard to achieve. 2009 for BD is going to be very interesting.
On another note, I primarily used my PS3 for BD playback (127 titles and counting) but I just recently purchased a Panney BD-35 that is going to replace my PS3 for playback for now. My guess is more PS3 owners are moving to a standalone player as they come down in prices -- and others will follow when those prices start moving towards sub $200 for the player.
On another note, I primarily used my PS3 for BD playback (127 titles and counting) but I just recently purchased a Panney BD-35 that is going to replace my PS3 for playback for now. My guess is more PS3 owners are moving to a standalone player as they come down in prices -- and others will follow when those prices start moving towards sub $200 for the player.
Every little bit helps I'm sure, I'm not sure we'll ever know how well BD really did over the last half of the year. A shame AP never corrected the story.
