Kmart Stops Selling Blu-Ray Players
Citing the high cost of Blu-Ray compared to HD-DVD, Kmart have announced that that are dropping Blu-Ray Players from their retail outlets. This can only come as another blow to Sony's troubled format, which, while technically superior to HD-DVD, is failing to capture the imagination of the consumer. Added to this problem is the inspired marketing of the external HD-DVD drive for XBOX360.
Tech-Ex writes:
deals like the Sears Black Friday special on the Toshiba A3 ($169) and the current Buy.com Xbox 360 HD-DVD external drive ($164.99 bundle with Heroes Season 1 and five movies) just add downward pressure.
Have dedicated formats ever been a sustainable means to corner a market, when there is substantial incentives to use competing technology? Image quality aside, I think formats such as blu-ray are understood as anti-piracy as much as next-generation, and it will take a better campaign than Sony's to make anti-piracy sexy and saleable me thinks. Reminds me of how Vaio was received for that matter...
SuperSpecialDavey
Posted to Miscellany on 4 November 2007
· Comments (20)
Other stuff like this: Blu-Ray Disc, format wars, Kmart, Sony
Link?
false:
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/CLF10702112007-1.htm
"This can only come as another blow to Sony's troubled format, which is, while technically superior to HD-DVD, failing to capture the imagination of the consumer. Added to this problem is the inspired marketing of the external HD-DVD drive for XBOX360."
Wow you guys. Laying it on a little thick aren't we? I'm not sure how having major studio support, the exclusive format of Blockbuster, and outselling HD-DVD movies by 2 to 1 all year qualifies as being "Sony's troubled format"... nor am I convinced that adding a $170 add-on to the $400 360 counts as "inspired marketing".
Am I missing some sarcasm in this article?
Also:
* Kmart have announced that that
* ... which is, while technically superior to HD-DVD, failing ...
The latter would be "... which, while technically superior, is failing ..."
It always feels a little awkward to point out grammar mistakes (without sounding like an ass anyway), and I'm only doing it because I hold gaygamer.net to pretty high standards (no, really). Do you guys have a copy editor?
This wouldn't have been that big a deal anyway. It might have been a really big deal if it were Target or Wal-mart rather than K-mart, but neither of these formats is really worth anything yet anyway. It's possible they never will be, at least until one or the other hits 99 bucks next year.
Come on, Scooby, how many gaming blogs do YOU know of with a copy editor?
There is also the matter of K-Mart still stocking the PS3, which is a blu-ray player, and only stocking a few HD-DVD player models in the first place.
Blu-ray is still ahead in sales, as evidenced by the Nielsen VideoScan data up to October 28:
http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/11/02/nielsen-videoscan-high-def-market-share-for-week-ending-october/
Basically this is all simply HD DVD camp spin.
BLU-RAY IS NOT SONY'S FORMAT
Panasonic has more patents in it than anyone else. Blu-ray belongs to and is supported by every single consumer electronics company in the business. Meanwhile, Toshiba has to pay other companies to rebrand their existing designs.
What this all really boils down to is Microsoft throwing a hissy fit that the movie industry didn't want to be under their thumb and adopt VC-1 and HDi as their primary codecs so that MS can collect on the discs.
So knowing they couldn't win, they decided to spoiler the whole thing and try to kill physical media so that their gatekeeper services like XBox Live could generate the revenue.
THey're dead meat, and they know it, and they're trying a last ditch effort to defuse the Spidey/Pixar doublethreat.
Toshiba is losing over $200 a player at $99 each, not counting the cost of 10 movies they're giving away(which they have to pay the companies for). Their pricing has stripped the possibility of any CE investing in their own designs for HD DVD at all, because they're no money in it. To put it more simply, in order to make up that $200 deficit they need to sell that person 1000 movies.
What the Wal-Mart deal was was clearing out the 50,000 players that Toshiba had unsold in the warehouse (people are reporting manufacturing dates of Dec/Jan 2007). Other retailers revolted and demanded similar pricing to clear out their unsold discs, and since they had very few on hand, Best Buy bullied them into extending it to the A3s that have just come in
The bottom line is that the retailers see virtually no profit from HD DVD (they're sold at $30 over cost (a 10% profit when sold at SRP), as opposed to Blu-ray adopting the standard 35% profit margin at retail. The CEs make money, the retailers make money, and everyone important to keeping the supply chain going is happy
Blu-ray on the other hand is following mostly the same path that DVD did before the Chinese started dumping on the US market. There's $399 players now, There will be $299 players by next summer, and $249 for next Christmas.
You can see this at retailers accross the country, the shrinking shelf space for HD DVD, combined with the 4-1 European sell ratios, and the 9-1 Japan ratios should tell you all you need to know. It ends the day the board at Microsoft cuts off the checkbook (which appears to be fast approaching since they've removed their #1 shill from the HD evangelism position)
"Come on, Scooby, how many gaming blogs do YOU know of with a copy editor?"
I have no idea. I don't know how gaming sites operate, this one or any other. All I can see is that one is needed here. Again - I'm not saying that coming off my high horse or anything, even though it's hard to make it sound otherwise. I criticize because I care :-)
Oh my, this went south badly. I think these format wars really suck, especially when, looking back, I have switched allegiances multiple times. Bluray was on my radar first, simply because it was clearly the cooler of the two :D
However, it seems all of this is marketed wrong - nobody understands how the same movie should cost twice as much and require a new player. I've heard of seome pseudo-technuts, that they've ordered an HD player without owning an HD TV. Unless the transition is hastened drastically, I can totally see both systems going the way of the Betamax - superior, yet uninteresting.
I just had a discussion with my mum and her bf about how media and content are undergoing a separation, how the games, movies and music we consume becomes independent of the actual CD/DVD/Bluray/whatever. This generation may well be the last of the optical kind. Solid State and HDD are standing at the ready....
Like I'd ever shop at k-mart anyways lol.
I don't find this article surprising, since bashing Sony, honestly or not, is so in vogue. Two other people mentioned the real facts to counteract the anti-Sony opinion in this article.
However, being a gay website, I was hoping that we're setting new trends, not parrotting current soundbites. Come on, guys, gals and others!! Wouldn't you rather have the style of the future, instead of the current fashion trend?
I like HD DVD better because the features are great. I have yet to see a single instance of BluRays "amazing" capacity being put to any use at all.
I think they're essentially the same to anyone who's not a fanboy, and I'll be happy if they both wither away like DVD-A and SACD, teeth still sunk into each other's skeletal throats in their shallow grave of consumer apathy.
Wow, people still shop at Kmart? The last couple of times I was in a Kmart the stores felt dirty, messy, and old. I wonder how they stay in business...
Guess who bought his first DVD player when they became sub 100 bucks and included 5 free movies? ME! It's an economics issues. People are buying these big HD tv's at a grand a pop, they don't want to have to spend 4 or 5 hundred in addition to it.
HD DVD dropped it's prices in time for this christmas and seeing as how this same tactic has played out with DVD, it might push HD DVD in the lead. It really is VHS/Betamax all over again, with Sony getting the shaft in both scenarios.You blu-ray fanboys should be shitting your pants, whether your currently in the lead or not. Now if one of the Blu-Ray companies release something under 200 with free movies that is NOT a generation 1 player, then they might have a chance.
As for blu-ray's current sales, I think those are padded by PS3 sales, since it's built in (not that there is much to pad with).
Me? I'm waiting for the dual format players (the ones that play both formats to their full potential) to go sub-500.
Guess who bought his first DVD player when they became sub 100 bucks and included 5 free movies? ME! It's an economics issues. People are buying these big HD tv's at a grand a pop, they don't want to have to spend 4 or 5 hundred in addition to it.
HD DVD dropped it's prices in time for this christmas and seeing as how this same tactic has played out with DVD, it might push HD DVD in the lead. It really is VHS/Betamax all over again, with Sony getting the shaft in both scenarios.You blu-ray fanboys should be shitting your pants, whether your currently in the lead or not. Now if one of the Blu-Ray companies release something under 200 with free movies that is NOT a generation 1 player, then they might have a chance.
As for blu-ray's current sales, I think those are padded by PS3 sales, since it's built in (not that there is much to pad with).
Me? I'm waiting for the dual format players (the ones that play both formats to their full potential) to go sub-500.
That is the worst article I have ever read on every level possible- or is it that sarcasm does not come over well in text?
scoot, Kmart has survived primarily because Sears bought them out a few years ago. This is why you now see Die-Hard batteries and Kenmore vacuums at Kmart.
And while it's true that Kmart put out a press release saying they're not going HD-DVD exclusive, a quick perusal of their website reveals that the only device they now sell that plays Blu-ray is the PS3.
So, dumb press release on the HD-DVD people's part, but as far as players go, they're basically right. I expect K-mart will be selling both HD disc formats in their DVD section until one (or both) of them goes the way of the VCD or UMD.
I think this article was made just for him to show off his photoshop skills