HD DVD uses stats to claim victory over rival

In an aim for HD DVD to claim victory over Blu-ray, it has released statistics based on hardware sales (PC drive & standalone) and title sales per player rather than comparing retail disc sales between the formats as the Blu-ray rival does.  In these statistics, the HD DVD promotion group co-chairman, Ken Graffeo claims it is selling seven times more software titles per hardware unit than Blu-ray.  However, as the Blu-ray hardware units covers the PS3, it is worth noting that many PS3 owners have bought the console to only ever play games on, unlike HD DVD player buyers who specifically buy the player to play HD DVD video titles on.  Only one Blu-ray title is sold for every two PS3 consoles, while 4 HD DVD titles are sold for every HD DVD device sale, which gives a clear indication that many PS3 owners just play games on their console.

When the standalone player sales are compared, HD DVD claims to account for 70% of current standalone player sales in Europe.  However, when PS3 consoles are included in the statistics, this pushes Blu-ray to 94% of the market for high definition player players.  HD DVD currently accounts for 70% of the next generation PC drive market.

Other things HD DVD claimed include its players being more affordable at half the cost of Blu-ray players and that it will release another 90 titles in Europe this year.  This will take HD DVD’s title count to around 400 by the year end.  Finally, it announced that the Canadian company Venturer will release a standalone HD DVD player for under €300 by Christmas to compete more aggressively with Blu-ray.