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Casino Royale is the best selling Blu-ray Disc movie  (Source: SPHE)
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment sells almost a million Blu-ray Disc movies in North America

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment took the opportunity at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin to announce that the company's Blu-ray Disc sales across North America are nearing the one million mark while sales in Europe have reached 250,000.

The sales numbers quoted relate only to the studio’s own movies. Blu-ray Disc movie sales surpassed the million mark back in April 2007. Sony expects its sales to climb strongly throughout the rest of the year with the release of the Spider-Man trilogy on October 30 and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind on November 13.

“These sales milestones across the world illuminate the positive reception from retailers and consumers alike for Blu-ray,” said David Bishop, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. “Our strong fourth quarter line-up will underscore the confidence in this format.”

According to Sony’s press release, weekly sales of Blu-ray Disc titles have averaged between two- and five-times the amount of HD DVD sales week over week since the release of the PlayStation 3. Sony also added that Blu-ray software now accounts for 69 percent of the total high-definition market in Europe. A previous report stated that Blu-ray accounts for 95 percent of hardware sales in 2007 when taking into account PlayStation 3 and PC drives.

While Blu-ray Disc will play host to a number of exclusive titles this holiday season, such as Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Ratatouille, the HD DVD Group scored a major win by signing Paramount and Dreamworks to an exclusive deal of its own, which ensures that such hits as Transformers will only be on HD in a translucent red box.

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Big Disconnect
By phattyboombatty on 8/31/07, Rating: 0
RE: Big Disconnect
By jacarte8 on 8/31/07, Rating: -1
RE: Big Disconnect
By ninjit on 8/31/2007 11:18:36 AM , Rating: 5
You, sir, are a conundrum.

Why did you buy the PS3, if you don't support the Blu-Ray format (and hope it loses), don't own any Blu-Ray movies, yet bought the thing ONLY for Blu-Ray playback?????

?!?!?!


RE: Big Disconnect
By Goty on 8/31/2007 12:04:23 PM , Rating: 2
What's even better is that he gets modded up because he's anti-bluray.


RE: Big Disconnect
By acer905 on 8/31/2007 12:10:54 PM , Rating: 2
Very nice wording there. And i agree totally... it makes no sense... its like buying a share of stock hoping that the company crashes and burns....


RE: Big Disconnect
By ObscureCaucasian on 8/31/2007 12:16:48 PM , Rating: 2
He said he isn't going to buy Blu Ray, but he still gets the discs off Netflix.


RE: Big Disconnect
By TSS on 8/31/2007 1:22:57 PM , Rating: 2
oh ok.

wait, isn't that stealing of some sort?


RE: Big Disconnect
By Belegost on 8/31/2007 5:48:40 PM , Rating: 2
I'm hoping you're just really bad at sarcasm.

Netflix is a movie rental service, there's no theft involved anywhere.


RE: Big Disconnect
By Locutus465 on 8/31/2007 1:42:27 PM , Rating: 2
Here is some good purchasing logic, I'm personally going to buy an Toshiba A2 HD-DVD player after I'm done recovering from the x-box spree because it is a very afforable standalone HD-DVD player (very small premium over x-box HD). I have no intention of buying a PS3 because it is expenseive, I have no intention of play PS3 games nor purchasing BR movies at this time. You see, that makes sense... Buy the hardware you actually intend to use.


RE: Big Disconnect
By Farfignewton on 9/1/2007 4:18:34 PM , Rating: 4
O.K. , I've got this one. (rubs hands and pulls out complicated flow chart)

Assume he doesn't want a playstation. Assume he REALLY hates blu-ray. Normally you wouldn't expect such a person to buy a PS3, but maybe he wants to send them a message about bundling the two together. So he buys a PS3. No games. No movies. Net result? He's out $500-$600 and Sony loses $150-$200 on the sale. I have a PS3, blu-ray movies, and games, but I have to hand it to him, he puts his money where his mouth is.

So if you really hate Sony, prove it. Put up (and buy a PS3) or shut up. ;)


RE: Big Disconnect
By Locutus465 on 8/31/2007 1:39:49 PM , Rating: 2
That makes no sense at all, I think you need to have someone reveiwing your purchasing logic prior to spending large somes of money... If you want BR to lose, why would you buy any BR device for the purpose of playing back movies you never intend to buy?


RE: Big Disconnect
By JSK on 8/31/2007 4:53:03 PM , Rating: 2
I case you didnt realize.

LOTR will be out on HD DVD and Blu-Ray


RE: Big Disconnect
By michal1980 on 8/31/07, Rating: 0
RE: Big Disconnect
By deeznuts on 8/31/2007 3:00:38 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
That's a pretty big gap and would support previous assertions that a lot of PS3's are not being used for Blu-Ray movie playback
There are no such "assertions" it's a fact, PS3's attach rates are lower. Not everyone buys it to play movies there are some that buy it to play games.

quote:
Of course, after you purchase a PS3 you don't usually have a lot of money left over to purchase Blu-Ray movies.
That's a very petty statement to add to a mature discussion. Look at the attach rate of HD DVD players when first introduced. Their prices were just as high, and their attach rate were higher. That nullifies your argument.


you need better news writers.
By michal1980 on 8/31/2007 9:56:42 AM , Rating: 2
the story makes it seem like it blu-ray only sold 250,000 disks in europe, when it was sony. (which you kind of acknowldge).

and sony's share was 47%, meaning the euros bought 532,000 diks.

a small number yes.

but hd-dvd has been outsold by more then 2:1 in the euro market as well. so their share is about 250,000 disks.




RE: you need better news writers.
By Shawn on 8/31/2007 2:23:14 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
but hd-dvd has been outsold by more then 2:1 in the euro market as well. so their share is about 250,000 disks.

Based on what? Everything I've read shows HD DVD to be in the lead in Europe.


By cubby1223 on 9/3/2007 8:12:08 PM , Rating: 2
not since the ps3 was released.


blu-ray space advantage
By dl429 on 8/31/2007 1:07:27 PM , Rating: 2
The biggest argument in favor of blu-ray is its size advantage. Many users on this forum and others have stated that 30gb is enough for HD content. I would agree that this is generally true but look at the 2 disc release of MI3. Both single layer 25gb blu-ray discs could have been replaced by one dual layer 50gb one, probably with room to spare(for higher bit rates??). Paramount instead released 2 discs for both formats because HD-DVD didn't have the capacity and I assume they did not want to highlight the weaknesses of HD-
DVD.




RE: blu-ray space advantage
By npoe1 on 8/31/2007 4:28:26 PM , Rating: 2
I haven’t seen the movie, but I don’t think that is long enough to fill 2 discs.


RE: blu-ray space advantage
By dl429 on 8/31/2007 4:35:33 PM , Rating: 2
It's the special features that would not fit. Not to mention they didn't include uncompressed sound.


Now we all loose
By jak3676 on 8/31/2007 11:27:32 AM , Rating: 4
Let me start by saying I own neither.

I used to hope for a time when one format would win out over the other. The looser would cry foul, but more of former supporters would slowly leave until the supply and demand slowly die out. That would leave a single victor that every studio and manufacturer would support - hopefully driving down costs. In the end even the companies that supported the loosing system would also profit by having a single system. So long as this perception of a format is going on, many potential buyers will happily stay on the sidelines. No one profits from that.

It's pretty safe to say that that will probably never happen now. As much as this war is reminiscent of the betamax and laserdisc ideas - the reality is that it's going to go the way of the DVD +/- R/RW. Both sides have some good points, both sides have some bad points and cost is always a factor. Unlike the whole +/- thing though both companies have much larger licensing fees.

While I think that only dual mode players (or maybe dual mode discs?) are the answer. Those won't be getting cheap for at least another few years.

So I may not be the first person to say it, but I'll predict that we'll be seeing this type of article for the foreseeable future.




Still, though...
By killerroach on 8/31/2007 10:58:49 AM , Rating: 2
...with sales that low, I can see why Paramount/Dreamworks decided to play "show me the money" and go HD-DVD only... my math in an earlier post had them needing to sell about a million HD discs a month to make their buyout an unwise proposition, and it sounds like, if it's taken Sony that long to sell a million Blu-Ray discs, they won't come anywhere near that.

Why am I getting the feeling that the studios aren't voting for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, but rather "none of the above"?