Wednesday, June 13, 2007

HD DVD and Blu-Ray Continue to Struggle

According to this article from Reuters, Toshiba has cut its calendar year 2007 forecast for HD DVD player sales in the U.S. by 44 percent, from 1.8 million players to one million,even though some Toshiba players are selling for as little as $249. (They had forecast worldwide sales of three million players by March 2008; clearly they won't make that number.) The Blu-Ray team hasn't announced comparable sales numbers, but we do know that Sony is well behind in sales of the Playstation 3; to date, they've sold 1.3 million in the U.S., one million in Europe and Australia combined and 911,000 in Japan. They claim to have shipped 5.5 million units, which means that approximately 1.8 million units are sitting around in stores and warehouses.

As for disc sales, the biggest seller (depending on which figures you believe) is either Sony's "Casino Royale" or Warner Brothers' "The Departed," both with around 100,000 units. Now, sales of 100,000 units aren't bad, but in DVD terms it's comparable to a relatively successful independent film release--nothing like what a major studio release should expect to sell.

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