Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending November 9th, 2008
Again the affects of the Blu-ray demographic can be felt on this week's Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of Home Media Magazine as Kung Fu Panda debuts at number five. While the animated feature managed to sell 88 percent as many DVDs on one day -- thanks to a Sunday release -- as Get Smart did in an entire week, on Blu-ray it only managed about 44 percent, or about 5 percent of the title's total sales. This is far below the weekly share of 8 percent that Blu-ray managed overall and way less than the 13 percent Journey to the Center of the Earth managed. Speaking of which, although the Blu-ray Journey managed to steal more sales away from DVD then Get Smart, overall it wasn't able to sell more copies. Looking ahead to next week, we expect that Blu-ray will still have revenues in the double digits, as it has for the past 6 weeks or so, but we doubt it'll go up when the biggest title will probably be Hellboy II.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
squiggleslash @ Nov 18th 2008 10:36AM
This drop in market-share is fairly understandable. Blu-ray sales in October were artificially high due to the preponderance of titles that appealed to the PS3 demographic. Those sales are starting to dry up.
The focus on "double digit sales" incidentally is misleading. The market share figures are what matter. Certain times of the year will be better than other times.
The really interesting part is what happens now. Does increased exposure to Blu-ray mean that the PS3 demographic will start buying all of their movies in the format, or will they look at what they've bought, cry "meh", and go back to DVDs?
mitchelljd @ Nov 18th 2008 10:39AM
there are certain movies which scream buy on blu-ray. others that don't
One thing is certain, i believe this is a big result of pricing. studios need to charge less of a premium for Blu-Ray content.
should kung fu panda really be $40 when you can buy it for $15 at Target on DVD?
the same can be said for Tropic Thunder, which will be $40 list price on BD, but $30 on basic dvd, which has alot more discounting. so Tropic thunder will be $15 on amazon, but $27 on sale at the same outlet.
honestly, there needs to be lower retail and on sale pricing if Blu-Ray wants higher market share and sales. why? some people are just happy to get dvd or do VOD on it. For Blu-Ray to succeed, the list pricing and on sale pricing needs to come down closer to DVD and be no more than $5 more per title max. only then will sales go through the roof.
Most people just don't want to pay a HD premium of $10+
Doc @ Nov 18th 2008 10:57AM
Agreed!!! You're right some people just don't want to pay that extra dork tax that is attached to blu-rays.
Seriously, is it that big a deal for them to either match DVD's price or keep within $5 ???
Because if a J6P is to look at a DVD and a Blu-ray of the same title and they are the same price
the decision on which to get becomes simple, HD all the way!! The extra price is a major part of my netflix decision since I don't like to re-watch movie too much anyways why pay more.
Mike @ Nov 18th 2008 11:16AM
Why did you compare the retail of kung fu panda on BD to the street price to the dvd version?
BTW..Target has kung fu panda on sale for $19... that's a $4 difference.
3dpenguin @ Nov 18th 2008 1:00PM
What people don't get is its not the studios that are overcharging for Blu-ray, they make less profit for retail per Blu-ray disc than DVD. It is the greedy turds at BDA and the patent controllers of the format who are causing the discs to cost so much, the printing and formatting cost differences between BD and DVD are very slight, it’s the licensing that cost so much.
Ordeith @ Nov 18th 2008 1:11PM
Time for HD-DVD to make a comeback?
Multi-format-mayhem @ Nov 18th 2008 10:41AM
Some call this progress.
I don't.
wreckedchevy @ Nov 18th 2008 12:39PM
the studio's don't care about matching dvd's price they consider bluray a premium product there for they charge a premium for it and that's just the way they are going to approach it. like it matters to them if bluray takes off mainstream either way they are making money. if somebody is going to buy a movie it will be either on blu/dvd/dl either way they still get paid so why should they care what format it's on. or atleast that's my 2cents on bluray disc pricing
Rob78 @ Nov 18th 2008 1:31PM
Between Vudu, the Netflix 360 streaming launching tomorrow and all the other emerging services, who the hell would wast money on buying optical discs in this day and age?
sn1per @ Nov 18th 2008 2:27PM
Maybe because people want a copy that's theirs to keep, with which they can do as they please, and won't be rendered useless when they buy new hardware.
*shrug*
NIUHuskie @ Nov 18th 2008 2:48PM
The comparisons on Tropic Thunder are slightly misleading. I just checked Amazon's prices and yes, the standard DVD version is $14.99, while the BD version is $26.99. However, the BD version is the "Unrated Director's Cut", which is $22.99 on standard DVD. Comparing apples-to-apples, the premium is four bucks for HD.
It's a similar story for this weeks other big release, Wall-E. The standard DVD version is $14.99, while the standard "3 Disc Special Edition with Digital Copy" is $22.99. The BD version is the same "3 Disc Special Edition with Digital Copy" and is only two bucks more.
In general, the price differences of BD to DVD on these threads is way overblown. The price difference is typically 5 to 10 dollars. Shockingly enough, I checked out Iron Man to see what recent releases that are past the discounting period were selling for. The Iron Man "Ultimate 2 Disc Edition" BD is selling for $19.99. The price on the same standard def "2 Disc Edition? $22.99! It's definitely not the same story on all releases, but this could be a sign of things to come.
3dpenguin @ Nov 18th 2008 3:16PM
This is only because they are discounting BD anywhere from 20-30% off of SRP, probably because the retailers don't want the discs sitting around on their shelves, even after they go off discount BD are being discounted 10-15% to keep them around $30.
daaper @ Nov 18th 2008 4:20PM
3dpenguin @ Nov 18th 2008 3:16PM
"This is only because they are discounting BD anywhere from 20-30% off of SRP, probably because the retailers don't want the discs sitting around on their shelves, even after they go off discount BD are being discounted 10-15% to keep them around $30."
Not true, the MSRP on Wall-E is only $1 more for Blu-ray and only $5 more on Tropic Thunder. If you do the math, there is actually a bigger discount from MSRP on the DVD versions. Just saying...
Gus @ Nov 18th 2008 5:59PM
$10.8 million in discs, say at an average of $25 per disc, that's about 440,000 discs.
440,000 divided by 8,000,000 players, that's an approx attach rate of 0.05 or 1 in 20 blu ray owners buying a disc this week.
At what point is a product mass market? I don't know, but at this rate blu ray will need to sell about another 12,000,000 players to sell around a million discs a week-(give or take a million or two!)
Lack of quality studio support is really starting to hurt.
Fred @ Nov 18th 2008 6:36PM
What do you mean lack of quality studio support??? All major studios support Blu-Ray. The real problem is that Blu is not that special to most people. I think its better to see things on Blu than on a upscaler, but some of my friends and my dad think that the upscaler is just as good.
Remember when you buy a DVD you can play it anywhere(Computer, DVD players, all video game systems except the wii off course, in your cars.) But when you buy Blu you are stuck to the one player you have. Even those of us that support Blu only have a player and cannot take that disc out of my home. So for the price of what your getting its still not worth it, Blu needs to be priced as much as a DVD and not more.
Gus @ Nov 18th 2008 7:12PM
I agree with you, but that isn't going to happen, if they are going to price it the same as DVD for a more expensive format, they would be worse off than where they are with DVD, much worse because of the lack of volume. Blu ray will always be more expensive than DVD, it has to or they might as well stick with DVD and bin blu ray.
Lack of support, I mean day and date release of all new releases, I have a friend considering blu but said he wouldn't waste his time because of a lack of new release movies, he doesn't want to purchase any old movies, and I can't blame him for that.
Jimmy @ Nov 18th 2008 7:16PM
As a comparison, here are estimated numbers for DVD.
There were about 145 million DVD players in the US at the end of 2007. $118 million was spent on DVD last week. Say the average price per DVD was $14, thats about 8.43 million discs. So there is an approximate attach rate with DVD of 0.06 or 1 in 17. All in all I do not think blu-ray is doing too badly.
The player sales numbers come from CEA and do not include DVD Rom drives or gaming consoles. If these are included the number of DVD players grows drastically. Just adding the PS2 adds 50 million units.
Also, it could be argued that the average price of DVDs that I used is incorrect but I could not find any good numbers for that. On one hand a lot of cheap $6 DVDs are sold every week. On the other hand the majority of sales come from new releases and the prices are usually closer to $20.
I also am not sure what would mark a product as "mass market" but DVD is certainly a mature market now. It has close to 90% household market penetration in the US. For contrast, DVD players did not hit the 8 million mark until sometime in the middle of 2000 (June or July) which was the third year of sales.
3dpenguin @ Nov 18th 2008 7:21PM
What he means by lack of quality is the selection of films being released. Most studios have cut back dramatically on library releases thus leaving you with either a) new releases or b) mindless drivel targeting the PS3 owners. As for the pricing of Blu-ray go and complain to BDA, even HD DVD PRG concluded it would take an active effort on their part to lower the price of HD DVD, but it went under before any plan was implemented, BDA on the other hand has no such plan or talk going on about disc pricing, its all about getting players out there to them.
Gus @ Nov 18th 2008 7:41PM
Jimmy, of course DVD is going to have similar attach rates with millions upon millions of players in the wild, every house has probably got 3 or 4 players each but no one is going to buy 3 or 4 DVDs each though, so those numbers don't stack up. In retail land though, volume cures all evils and DVD has that ability regardless of market conditions, blu ray doesn't and is at the mercy of many factors.
Spiza @ Nov 18th 2008 8:12PM
Iron Man is still having a crazy sales ratio to DVD compared to anything I can think of.
LonnieDvD @ Nov 18th 2008 7:57PM
I have said this a thousand times already, but the cost of Blu-Ray players and discs MUST drop to dvd levels. Until the BDA realizes this, standard dvd will reign supreme.
Gus @ Nov 18th 2008 8:00PM
Read above, that is NOT going to happen.