Sony Set to Market Blu-ray as Winner of Format War

An anonymous reader writes "Citing the recent sales numbers, Sony exec David Bishop is claiming that the high-def format war can officially be declared over. With a movie sale ratio of almost 2:1 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.'"

Number of movies

[SnarfQuest]

Aren't the number of movies available related to the popularity of the format?

Sure....

[Anonymous Coward]

And these are the same people who already believe that the PS3 is the winner of the console wars against the 360 and the Wii, even though sales numbers in the US and even Japan say otherwise.

Nice of them ....

[gstoddart]

Nice of Sony to declare themselves the winner. Now we can all get on with out lives.

Seriously, is this the same Sony who last week said the fact that they're being outsold by Nintendo doesn't mean they're losing, it means we shouldn't be counting Nintendo.

I'm fairly confident a company can't unilaterally declare themselves the winner in a 6 month old format war. It doesn't work like that.

Oh well, it's their Kool-Aid, they can drink it all they want. :-P

Cheers

Re:Number of movies

[ngtvtw13ve]

If that was true then wouldn't we still be buying vhs tapes?

Re:Number of movies

[LiquidCoooled]

If thats the case, divx avi movies rule the world ;)

just waiting...

[Anonymous Coward]

I see no need to do anything other than wait 3 or 4 years until this whole thing sorts itself out. I've lived for 30+ years in an NTSC world, and I just don't see any compelling reason to shell out thousands on new hardware to be an early adoptor for what amounts to nothing more than television.

Of course, I've been waiting 3 or 4 years already for this to happen, and it hasn't yet - which makes me look all the wiser for not investing in new hardware in 2003...

Why is it either/or?

[Pluvius]

'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.'

Wouldn't the fact that there are over twice as many new releases for BD than for HD-DVD in itself be an important indicator of stronger adoption of BD?

Rob

Re:Number of movies

[Andy Dodd]

Number of movies released in a particular month != total number of movies available

I believe that prior to this particular month, HD-DVD was consistently ahead of Blu-Ray. Declaring a winner based on a single months' worth of statistics (especially at this early point when both formats are in their infancy) is utterly idiotic.

Re:Number of movies

[Itchyeyes]

Yes, but they're also related to how much the studios like the format's DRM and how much money the format producer is willing to throw at them.

Re:Number of movies

[SnarfQuest]

But, how many new VHS movie titles were released last month?

Numbers??

[Kelz]

25 new Blu-Ray releases and 11 HD-DVD releases in one month?

Beta was still around for 27 years. I have a feeling that the two sides will be able to co-exist for quite some time (especially with the duel-format players that are close to release).

whichever sells first $99 player is the winner

[u19925]

i ain't gonna buy till price drops to $99. so 4 me, whichever one sells first for $99, is the winner.

BluRay has a Case

[Nom du Keyboard]

With BluRay in every PS3, HD-DVD not an integral part of any shipping product yet, and BluRay movies starting to outsell HD-DVD, there good reason to be betting on the BluRay horse. BluRay market penetration should outstrip HD-DVD, unless they're able to pull a VHS in pricing or capacity.

Re:Number of movies

[Yvanhoe]

So 36 movies were released in HD format this month. Clearly, regular DVD are more popular by an order of magnitude. Until one of the HD format outperforms DVDs using this metrics, I wouldn't call the war over.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[Not_Wiggins]

When that happens, the loser will most likely wind up as a cheap burner you can stick on an IDE cable. And I'm really looking forward to that for data storage.

More likely, it'll wind up like the format war between DVD-R and DVD+R: you'll get a player capable of reading both formats, so it won't matter and the prices of the movies will be roughly equivalent.

If anything, consumers will pay for the war indirectly through hardware costs that integrate both solutions transparently.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[AaronPSU777]

"What I'm hoping happens is that one of the two becomes the dominant format (which it almost certainly will), and the other one will become the "ghetto" HD format."

I think another likely scenario is dual format players. Remember we had a format war just a few years ago with DVD+R and DVD-R and it was negated when dual format burners came out. If we do get dual format players it seems possible HD-DVD could become the more prominent format since it has plenty of space for full length movies *and* is cheaper to produce. Of course Blu-Ray has stronger DRM from what I understand so maybe studios will stick with that format as much as possible.

Re:Number of movies

[Penguin's Advocate]

It's not at all idiotic. When the signs in Best Buy (or Walmart, or on tv) tell Joe Sixpack that "Blu-ray is the winner of the Hi-Def format war" (Assuming Mr. Sixpack is there spending his tax return on a new Hi-Def setup) What do you think Joe is going to buy? He's not stupid, he's not going to buy the "loser".

Re:Number of movies

[pluther]

I think the problem with this is, that most people don't know there's a format war going on.

Those that do are the ones paying attention, and they probably won't be fooled by the marketing hype declaring Sony the winner.

25 titles release in a month, compared to 11 for the competition, is far too small of a number to actually draw any kind of conclusion. Sure, it's more than twice as much, but with numbers this small impressive-sounding percentages are easy to come by.

Re:Will they say the same about the PS3?

[sl3xd]

You know, joke aside, it's a very good point. And, in fact, the same lesson should be taken: Just because one is selling well, it doesn't spell the doom of a competitor.

Sony's just doing a bit of grandstanding to try to get more people to buy Blu-ray: "The format war is over! We won!" Fear sells, and they're attempting to boost their sales by saying the competition is doomed; one of the oldest sales tactics in existence.

Just like consoles, the success of one does not mean the demise of another. There's no reason why both can't succeed, no reason why "there must be one."

Cases in point:
CDMA vs TDMA vs GSM (Cell phones). There's no small amount of grief that this caused, and the solution was to build phones that do all of 'em. Oddly enough, that's what is starting to happen with the "HD" optical discs.
PS3 vs. Wii vs. Xbox
Linux vs. Mac vs. Windows
Apple's music vs. everything else...

And so on...

Re:Number of movies

[compro01]

Interesting... *ahem* I hereby declare myself the sexiest man alive!
Now all I have to do is just repeat it often enough that everyone starts believing it... ;)

well, if you repeat as much as sony's marketing budget would allow, it's likely that a number of people would start believing it.

Re:Number of movies

[encoderer]

What article are YOU reading, bro?

I think _YOU_ ought to click on the link.

The article clearly says, many places, it's talking about JANUARY.

And it doesn't say so directly in the article, but if you do a little homework, you'll find that HD has outsold Blu-Ray (in units) so far.

So really, you want to try that again?

Only $999,999,999,999,999,999.99 !!

[gumpish]

$99 huh? $100 too rich for your blood?

It's comments like yours (and likely your real life buying habits) that result in such inane dishonest mental pricing games played by marketers.

"No one will buy this car for $20,000... but if you price it $19,999.99 you'll have to beat them away with a stick!"

Wouldn't you rather live in a world where prices were nice even multiples instead of $NICE_EVEN_MULTIPLE - .01 ?

Re:Number of movies

[Talgrath]

He does actually have a point though, the TRENDS show that Blu-Ray is steadily gaining on its HD-DVD counterpart; and most likely will overtake it if HD-DVD doesn't do something to turn the trends around (the article mentions this in part). Considering Blu-Ray hit the market second, it's not terribly surprising that HD-DVD outsold Blu-Ray overall, so far.

Re:My thoughts exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute, the losing format will make a profit by producing bigger numbers than the dominant format?

Wouldn't that make it the dominant format?