The first worrying sign was that research material is proving a little difficult to come by. It seems it is hard to put stats down for unit sales so the consumer can't readily see where the format war is heading. Sony seemed very quick to announce themselves as the winner in January when the release of 2 popular movie exclusives saw a boost in sales (*shock).
Im not the only one struggling to find this data. Apparently, those with more than just a keen interest are using Amazon stats in a frantic effort to see whose winning, so the data is obviously a mixed bag. Of the more Sony suck theming stats, I found the following bites.
Sony officials also revealed that, according to an online survey of approximately 100,000 current PlayStation 3 owners conducted by the company, 90 percent have watched a Blu-ray movie on their console.
To me, thats a worrying statistic when the console is bundled with a "free" BluRay movie, TALLADEGA NIGHTS in the US. So 10% of those that bought a PS3 in the US/Japan don't give a shit about BluRay?! That or the movie was so horrible they couldn't watch it all the way through (which goes to show how much Sony care about you, by bundling a POS movie that no one would buy normally (note. The UK launch sees the film Click featuring Adam Sandler as a freebie!)). These are Sonys own statistics too! Even if they didn't like the bundled disc, I would say they tested it to "see the amazing differences", yet there are 10% of PS3 owners that don't feel BluRay offers enough of a difference to warrant buying a movie they actually want.
Plus, this statistic leads to
But even apart from that, 80 percent of those surveyed plan to purchase further Blu-ray movies, while 72 percent of respondents stated that they plan to rent a Blu-ray movie in the near future.
So let me get this straight... 10% thought BluRay was an unimportant feature on the PS3, then a further 10% watched the steaming pile of turd you provided them with and now have no intention of buying BlueRay movies..
Without getting technical (I like to keep my blog at surface level) I can see the merits of future gen (current gen is actually the correct term, it is 2007 ) but when 1/5th of those buying a console don't give a shit about one of its "key features" (see previous entry) you have definitely got something wrong.
Consumerwise, the first company to really embrace the triple format disc will win hands down, as consumers will be future-proof and be able to use it on current players they actually have at the moment. I would buy a HD DVD drive for my 360 tomorrow if DVD movies were dropped in favor of dual layer DVD and HD DVD discs... that would be awesome, and great value for money! I really don't see the Movie Conglomerates or the MPIAA loving the idea of providing people with discs they wont have to replace unfortunately! :(
Blu-ray discs are being declared the victor over rival HD-DVD by Blu-ray supporter Sony. 'And yet while all agree that it was a strong month for Blu-ray, opinion is split on whether the surge in sales is an indicator of stronger user adaption of Blu-ray compared to HD DVD, or simply a reflection of the larger number of new Blu-ray titles that hit the market over the month -- 25 new Blu-ray titles were released in January, compared to just 11 titles on HD DVD for the same period.'"
The statistics are largely pumped up by the "free" BluRay disc in the PS3, and as they pump more PS3s into the US and Japan, the amount of BluRay movies shockingly goes up too. I'm not saying that this is the only reason BluRay is "winning" the format wars, I just think the statistics used to draw these conclusions are manipulated to begin with.
Stock levels at Amazon are a little confusing too :
They show a stock level of, on average, 15k of both formats. The HD DVD graph seems consistent with a good throughput of sale and demand, whilst to me, the BluRay stock looks like stagnant stock rotation to me. Maybe I'm slightly jaded this month, but it does!
I also find total number of sales quite interesting:
More interestingly, VideoScan's numbers indicate that during the seven days between Jan 7 and Jan 14, Blu-ray managed to close the gap of total discs sold since inception with HD DVD by over seven percentage points, suggesting that if the current trend continues, the two formats could be at disc sales parity within weeks.
So, even with 2 million copies of TALLADEGA NIGHTS out there, BluRay is still trailing the total number of sales? Most of the FACTS are still blurred as we approach April, so this "race" is still a Black Box scenario.
Maybe if we had some actual sales figures from both camps, we might be able to see which format people seem to be buying. To me it still seems like nobody really cares, and I'm sure if you compared sales to DVD sales both formats get the finger at the present time.
So long as HD DVD doesn't slowdown its output of films, and catches up with a few killer releases, we hopefully won't be drowning in a Sony proprietary format in the future, one that thanks to DRM (that we all know Sony love so much), will mean we are enslaved to buying exclusively what they tell us, subjected to the advertising they make money from, watch it how they tell us (no skipping those trailers), on a machine they made/licensed, and led into a future of even more formats because Sony is now so "brilliant".
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