James Delahunty
10 Mar 2007 20:20
According to figures from trade magazine Video Business, Blu-ray titles outsold HD DVD titles by a margin or about 2:1 in February. Around 250,000 Blu-ray movies were sold in the month ahead of 125,000 HD DVD titles sold. While the boost in Blu-ray sales is no doubt helped by the PlayStation 3 (PS3) sales in North America, sales of the title "The Departed" appear to rule out some other offered reasons for the format outselling HD DVD.
Blu-ray buyers grabbed 20,000 copies of The Departed on Blu-ray, while 13,000 bought the movie on HD DVD. While this is not a 2:1 margin, it does appear at first glance to attack the argument that Blu-ray only outsold HD DVD because there were more releases in the time frame. According to High-Def Digest, there were 55 releases of Blu-ray titles in the first 8 weeks of 2007, compared to 23 HD DVD releases.
Although, to be fair, it must be noted that HD DVD version of The Departed is a HD DVD/SD DVD combo disc and so costs $5 more than the Blu-ray version. Sony VP Rich Marty said that he expects the gap between Blu-ray and HD DVD to further widen with the Sony title, Casino Royal, headed for Blu-ray and (of course) not HD DVD. However, Universal VP Ken Graffeo warned against drawing conclusions from these figures.
"You can’t look at the last two months as a trend or as what the consumer wants to do in this format... It’s really an artificial, short time period," he said. He also suggested that there are other reasons for Blu-ray's boost in sales, including two-for-one offers made by retailers, and Amazon's 50% reduction on selected Blu-ray titles.
Source:
High-Def Digest