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 The High Definition DVD Studio Support Petition Campaign |
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Welcome to the world of High Definition DVD! December 26th 2007 Will PS3 movie downloads further hurt Bluray attach rates? Sony has been talking about movie downloads for the PS3 for some time now, but it appears that they feel they are ready to start soon. In fact, it appears that they are preparing to start testing the service in Japan. As you know, this service is supposed to be similar to the service that Microsoft has already running for the Xbox on the XBox Live network. It seems that Sony may have it's hands full trying to make the PS3 useful, since we have recently been informed that Sony has been pleading with game developers NOT to abandon the "struggling" PS3 platform. Aparently, developers have realized that they "can staff four or five Wii teams with the same number of people it takes to make one PS 3 game"!! Anyway, I digress... We are forced to ask - however - will this new download service further hurt the Bluray disc attach rates of the PS3, which is already widely acknowledged to be lower than other standalone players? And, if so, how will this affect the sales of the Bluray format, given that the PS3 apparently makes up 74% of the Bluray players in homes? Microsoft doesn't really have to worry about this issue, of course, as most Xbox 360s do not have an HD DVD drive connected to them, and the majority of HD DVD players are standalone players. However, let's look at the Bluray format and its players for a moment... according to Sony's recent statement, they have sold 2.7 Million "Bluray players" in the US. Of course, they are including PS3s as "players", of which they say are 2 million of the 2.7 million players, or 74%. Now Adams Media also reports that about 370,000 of those Bluray players are standalone, or dedicated, players - leaving about 330,000 "Bluray players" that are likely mostly disc drives that were sold with PC and laptop packages. Adams Media also reports that HD DVD now has almost 900,000 players in the market, of which 580,000 are standalone players and 296,000 are Xbox 360 "add-on' players. But yet, HD Media movie sales (both formats combined) have seen HD DVD taking almost 40% of the sales since September 2nd. According to the "player" numbers that the BDA is releasing, they should have taken 75% of the software sales during that period, if all is "hunky dory"! So HERE is where the problem with the PS3 comes in... many people who own PS3s just aren't buying Bluray movies. In fact if we do some quick calculus on the numbers, and accept that Bluray dedicated players have the same movie "attach rate" as HD DVD dedicated players it would appear that the attach rate of the PS3 is somewhere about 1/3 that of dedicated players. And it could be much worse than that also, depending on how bad you think the attach rate is for the Xbox HD DVD add-on player. (Personally, I don't think it's too bad, since all owners bought it specifically to play HD DVD movies). Now it would appear to a simple person such as myself that the very same people who are going to watch HD movie downloads on the PS3 tomorrow, are in fact the SAME people who are ARE indeed watching Bluray movies on the PS3 today. This could be a huge problem for the Bluray format as a whole, since the PS3 makes up 75% of the Bluray players in homes... It has been stated by certain studios that they are not keen to rely on a game machine to be the foundation of the next Optical Media movie format. In fact, Warner has expressed reservations about relying on a game console for the next movie format, as recently as the 3rd quarter of 2007. If I were Sony, I'd be pretty worried about those Bluray sales numbers slipping further. Which is why I predict that they will continue to delay movie downloads for the PS3 until much later in 2008...
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