August Blu-ray movie sales drop

With those movies leading the top five, it's no wonder Blu-ray movie sales struggled in August! Wake me up when a decent movie is released on Blu-ray...

Yeah, we really want more redneck beer fart movies and cheerleader masacres on BD.

You have to put quality movies on Blu-ray before we'll buy them. I don't pay $26 - $30 for crap. I pay $5 for crap!!

I feel sorry for folks as early adopters, if one day we read: Studios blame lackluster sales as reason for discontinuing any future Blu-ray releases. MGM chairman states: "We simply cannot justify the cost of producing 2 versions of the same movie, when 95% of our customers, prefer DVD." Especially considering the royalty payments to Sony in order to offer these unpopular discs.

Sony chairman, Lord "what's his name" has verbally pledged to continue releasing Blu-ray movies from Sony Pictures, for at least the immediate future. As an olive branch to our loyal customers, for the next 30 days, any remaining Sony fans purchasing the hialrious Steve Martin blockbuster: "Pink Panther 2" Will also receive the same movie in low resolution via a complementary UMD disc! In addition, Sony is offering 10 dollar rebates to those who still need a PS2 in order to play back these handy discs! Sony's chairman states this is quite a deal for Bluray owners, as what the heck else can they do with these players now? Use them as a doorstop? He likes to remind everyone that the PS3 was a better value anyway and at least you can still play (Sony) games on the darn thing.

Well, 10,000 BC and Jumper are pretty awful - not that I'd buy any blu-ray movies anyway, as I don't have a player. People are staying away because it's still too expensive, and the difference does not really 'enhance' your movie experience. It should have been rolled out as a natural progression of technology - not as a new 'cash cow' for the big companies. Are we going to have to do all this again for the next big hi-def format ? What colour will it be next time ? Purple Ray ? Companies are over-selling it, and, thanks to consumer knowledge (courtesy of the intertubes) - consumers are under-buying it

Yep, Bluray is on track to gain a dominate market share from DVD. DVD has only 92% of the market which is pathetic. Watch out DVD fan boys. Your days are numbered!!

8% market share v. DVD. The numbers are on par with studio projections: they aim for 10-12% at year end. Looks like they'll make it. Blu-Ray is following its normal progression and meeting those goals. Looks like the anti-Blu-Ray mob will have to suffer the format for a long, long time.

At least one movie will come out this fall that will likely help movie studio sales: Hancock. http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Sony/Disc_Announcements/Sony_Sets_Hancock_Blu-ray_for_November/2044

Plus there were no freaking sales this month. I mean ok, Tower.com had a few titles for a few dollars less than the rest, but in general, nada. It wasn't until this week that Dark City went on sale for $10.99 and V for Vendetta for $13.99 and the MI series to get under $17 each. In general this has been a terrible month to be a BluRay sale hunter.

8% market share is, in my opinion, vastly over estimated (realistically it's no more than 2%). All you have to do is visit normal shops and look around - a small part of retail devoted to it - and nobody even looking at hi-def. We don't have to 'suffer' the blu-ray format at all - we can simply ignore it until WE decide that hi-def is actually an option. You know, out of all of my DVD's - which ones would I re-buy again in a hi-def format.... assuming that I had all the necessary kit to play it properly... I could count them on one hand, and if most people think that way - blu-ray is going nowhere.

Uh remember there has been movies that have sold 1 million units. We will see how well next month is when Iron Man, The Hulk, and The Godfather series is released. Also your taking one months figures and applying like the only reason it down is because no one is interested. How about because it's summer and everyone is outside? Or can you name any great movies that came out this month on Blu Ray? Or compare it to last year? If your just taking this number as the mecca of all truths then your being narrow sided.

Fitting, that everytime a story about Blu-Ray comes up, the same handful of whiners make an appearance. That is something you can bank on everytime. For people who don't really care about Blu-Ray, the sure seem to waste alot of time talking about it.

Handful? Blu-ray fans are the handful if you care to accept the statistics.

Like i said, mention the word Blu-Ray, and they come running like someone tossed a bone. And Blu-Ray is going to be a small percentage right now, duh, it's a new product, unlike DVD which has been around for over 10 years. I'm sure DVD just came along a decade ago and just posted huge numbers versus VHS right? That's okay, you can stick with your DVD....i'll enjoy The Dark Knight on the highest quality available to me to enjoy on my HDTV, which is Blu-Ray.

@XTR



"The first DVD players and discs were available in November 1996 in Japan, March 1997 in the United States, 1998 in Europe and in 1999 in Australia. By 2003 DVD sales and rentals topped those of VHS; during the week of June 15, 2003 (27.7M rentals DVD vs. 27.3M rentals VHS in the U.S.). Major U.S. retailers Circuit City and Best Buy stopped selling VHS tapes in 2002 and 2003, respectively. In June 2005, Wal-Mart and several other retailers announced plans to phase out the VHS format entirely, in favor of the more popular DVD format."

Took 6 years to top VHS sales and to cause some major retailers to drop the VHS format.

This is also telling:

If you look at 1997 sells of DVD players, 350,000+ were sold the 1st year; but by the end of 1998, over 1 million were sold that year alone. And the trend continues showing very massive increases in units sold from year to year. Also, the figures do not reflect the sale of any game console that utilized DVD, i.e PS2, or DVD Rom drives for a PC.

According to this article,, 2.7 million Bluray players were sold by the end of Dec 2007. However, these figures reflect PS3 sales also.

If you go back to the article posted on CDFreaks, hwww.cdfreaks.com/news/Study--Blu-ray-sales-struggle-but-PS3-sales-help, the only thing keeping Bluray player sales going is the PS3. If you take those sales away from the picture, you would see very slow growth compared to DVD player sales over a 2 year time period.

Looking at the historical numbers by shaoulin007, it looks like blu-ray is going on schedule. But some people (mostly blu-ray haters) doesn't consider PS3 a blu-ray player, but the fact is PS3 is a blu-ray player in addition to multimedia console.

Maybe your schedule and XRT's but no one elses

Without the PS3, Blu-ray struggles mightily for acceptance
by GamePro staff

August 4, 2008, 03:36 PM — GamePro —

Just how important is Blu-Ray to the average consumer? Not very important at all, a new study found Friday, and the PS3 may very well be what's keeping it above water.

In fact, PS3 owners, on average, are buying many more Blu-ray movies, per person, than people with dedicated Blu-ray players.

"While you might think gamers purchase fewer movie discs than others, we didn't see any significant evidence of that in our results," said ABI principle analyst Steve Wilson. "PS3 console shipments will go a long way to help bring down manufacturing costs and drive down Blu-ray player prices."

An ABI survey of 1,000 people found that over 50% have "no plans" to purchase a Blu-ray player. A further 23% said they are likely to buy a Blu-ray player, but not until at least 2009.

The survey found that consumers are still more than happy with standard definition DVDs, mostly because they entail not having to buy a new HDTV. The difference in quality between standard and high definition was also a wash with consumers: 50% said HD was "much better" than standard def, but 40% said it was only "somewhat better."

And don't expect a price cut on players anytime soon. ABI predicted that players will remain above $300 until 2009. That still makes the PS3 your best bet for a cheap Blu-Ray player. That is, if you even care about HD enough to justify the price point. Most people, apparently, couldn't care less.

LOL...Are people still paying RETAiL for BluRay?? Get with the times people..it's possible to get BluRay's for $1-$3/movie...Jyst use your heads..If the format fails, it fails. I could care less...Another over priced fromat will come along and take it's place..Now we just need $99 WalMart players

I pasted the links to the post I did above but for some reason it won't let me post the links when I try and submit. Anyone know why?

Something went wrong with adding it to the database. It should work now.

That "Blu Ray struggles for acceptance" article cracks me up every time I read it, EVERY time. What a sh!te piece of journalism. Just look at the so-called stats from their poll of 1000 people. Just under 50% intend to buy a Blu Ray player (since we're not told precisely how many AREN'T planning to buy, just that it's "over 50%"), and 23% of those (strangely precise, that figure) are waiting until next year. That gives ~25% planning to buy NOW.

Add on the hilarious (and already proved woefully innaccurate) "players will remain above $300 until 2009" toss and you can see the poll/article for what it really is - a Happy Meal for a thimblefull of bitter HD DVD fanbois and Blu Ray haters to munch on.

Gobble that regurgitated vitriol up boys and girls, though it must be tasting blander and blander with every new Blu Ray release.

It just cracks me up, why when I was young we had record players and reel to real video. Do you remember the cost of VHS when it first came out?, Do you remember the cost of CD and CD-R when they first came out (Sony haters, throw out your CD-R because you hate the company who with Philips "invented" it), do you remember the cost of DVDs when they first came out? and the market share, pathetic.
$400 for a player is nothing and $30 disc nothing compared to the old technology. DVD had $13,000 recorders, Remember? Remember 3.2GB DVDs?
I don't think so.
If it's not free I don't want it

The 8% number is only among new release titles. When you look at the home based disc market as a whole it's less than 2%. $10.7 billion dollar market size to $194 million in Blu-Ray sales January to June 2008.

I used to have a HTPC connected to my HDTV. This HTPC has a combo Hd DVD/Blu-ray ROM. Unfortunately, my main desktop PC self-destructed, so I promoted my HTPC to be main desktop. Now I can't watch HD disks on my HDTV. I dropped Blu-ray from my Netflix account. I never did buy any Blu-ray disks, just rented them, and I won't be buying any in the future.

blu-ray players cost to much iron man blu-ray will suffer

Blu-Ray is, on the other hand, becoming very popular in Japan. I'm a poor American who can't afford one, but everyone else has Blu-Ray!

Blue-ray, the newest generation of Laser Disk. Sorry, but my next format upgrade will be all digital - sans the disk.