Playstation 3 not helping Blu-ray?

After months of delay, the Playstation 3 finally hit the US on November 17th. The gaming console has long been known as Sony's secret weapon in the HD format war: Their Trojan Horse to get a blu-ray player into every home. However, it now looks as if also this launch from Sony is not having the impact they had hoped for. Many analysts claim that they were only able to ship 150,000 - 250,000 of the more than 400,000 promised units. These sold out quickly, but many units were bought with reselling at a high price in mind and not for gaming or movie use.

Sony sold the idea of Blu-ray to many studios with Playstation 3 as their biggest argument for supporting their format and not HD-DVD. Fox among others have said that the PS3 was one of the main reasons for their Blu-ray support.

So, here two weeks after launch, is the PS3 affecting sales? Read on to find out..

[JasonPC360PS3Wii]

Blu-Ray may have ruined the PS3, they should have just left it out.

[Islandkiwi]

The bottom line is that there are still no ps3's on the market...so how is that supposed to bolster blu-ray sales?

That being said, I'd take the Batman hd-dvd over the Xmen blu-ray any day of the week.

[Marriot VP]

good point, I didn't immediately think about it. Yah there isn't even 400K PS3's out yet.

[marcusfenix]

Can help Blu-Ray, it was doomed before it was ever revealed. HD-DVD for the win! HD-DVD sells 3-5 times more hardware and movies than poo-ray. BetaMax 3 baby with the exclusive celleron processor specifically designed to run linux like last generation processors.

[bambam1901]

Shouldn't you be doing your math homework, kid?

[PS360PCROCKS]

Um the article states that the Blu-ray top 3 has sold 5,000 copies and the HD-dvd around 1400, so I am confused? and um it's been two weeks, not exactly time to claim a winner, hell if that was the case the 360 beat the ps3 by December 1st 2005...come on guys what a lame article this is

[eques judicii]

not sales figures... the number is the rank of sales... "1" being the highest rank...

[GamerX2]

Hd-dvd is starting to gain some momentum!! It already has the lead in sales right now , and with 8 million xbox 360 in people homes as we speak!! If only half of them decides to support hd-dvd player add on and start buying movies, It could be a dangerous situation for sony

[DJ]

It also depends on the growth rate of the HDTV market. Besides, there's only 400K consoles out.

[THELANDOFSANDS]

400k is tragic.

[big_tim]

We were saying the same last year with the 360.

[THELANDOFSANDS]

except MS wasn't as stupid/arrogant to force a new storage format on its users and gamble the companies future on movie sales...

All 360 had to support at launch was itself- if blu(r)-ray flops, ps3 flops.

[Marriot VP]

I know, there's only 400K, and there's nothing to worry about cause Sony said they would have 4 million by the end of 2006.

So what's everybody concerned about??

[power of Green]

That's just it!, Sony claimed and hollywood gambled. This isn't good no one likes to loose money; do you think people will care why there
's so little PS3's. Hollywood will do a "betta Max" on Sony again!. I just can't see Blu-ray ever catching up.

[UrbanJabroni]

Comment Erased...although I had to add this meaningless post since there is no "delete" button.

[soccerstar]

THELANDOFSANDS you know damn good and well the ps3 won't fail if blu-ray fails people at my school are talking about the ps3 all the time and when i bring up blu-ray not one of them has a clue as to what it is. I prefer my xbox 360 over the ps3(my friend camped for one) so dont say i am a sony fanboy

[THELANDOFSANDS]

no, if blur-ray fails to become the dominant HD format, sony will go bankrupt.

and what do you think that will do to the PS3?

[Scrumptious]

the last of the Poo-Ray supporters should be jumping ship any day now. Did anyone really think a Sony game system could influence the movie indusrty? Oh yeah...a few years ago with UMD. UMD will be the moive "walkman" and everyone will have portable players besides the PSP to enjoy movies on the go. Did Sony even launch thier Poo-Ray player yet? With HD-DVD half the price and having better video quality, what wre the studio's thinking? Step outside the game fanboy box and take a look at the movie industry boys and girls. Consumers dictate the industry and the consumers are speaking. Besides price, take a look at the movie library's themselves. Pull up the amazon stores for Poo-Ray and HD-DVD and look at the exclusives. I much rather watch Tokyo Drift of Matrix in HD than UltraViolet.

[MicroGamer]

if people kept buying DVD's and both new formats failed. I would get the HD-DVD for the 360 if I wanted to get into it, but I have no problem with the old DVD as a format, really.

[Xtrm L1481L1TY]

Buy a $2000+ HDTV then come back and say that. I dare ya. The fact is regular DVD looks like sh*t on the new HDTV's. Standard Def TV's look good with DVD but for some reason HDTV's look bad with DVD. HD programming on my cable blows DVD format away. I'm considering buying the HD-DVD add-on but I'm not sure which format will win.

[DEIx15x8]

That's why Microsoft gave us the gift of up-converting. We can watch out DVDs in HD without paying anything (an internal or external drive) extra or having to choose a side that might fail in the next gen movie war. We already chose a side in he next gen game war, one war gamble is good enough for me.

[Marty8370]

It too early to say what impact PS3 is having on Blu-ray sales.Once PS3 production is ramped up and millions of PS3's are easy avalible.PS3/Blu-ray will end up the clear winner mark my words.

[Marriot VP]

"PS3/Blu-ray will end up the clear winner mark my words. "

But no one here respects your words or even wants to listen to them. Mr. one-bubble

[PS3n360]

Mr. One Bubble! That made me laugh at work just now. Thanks Paul!

[MoonDust]

LMAO!

[DEIx15x8]

I marked them as crap, does that count?

[blackmagic]

Paul, that was damn funny! I had to click the 'let him/her speak' link just based on --HOW MUCH-- I laughed!!!

[power of Green]

It means theres no way PS3 can help with so little numbers and being $600.

It's too late.

DVD is the reconized format and if you throw in HD for $800 less in some cases it's hard to see it your way.

The consumer always picks the cheapest product simular in quality and feature's, Always!. Not even enough PS3 fans to make a difference, a few million wouldn't do much.

[Scythesean]

yes and so was vhs then cd then dvd now OMG a newer format with more space.....

[ScorpioKyle]

It's only been 2 weeks!!!!! I'm not a fan of sony or bluray, but come on, have common sense

[power of Green]

It's just that everybody had it in there minds that the launches of HD-movie players in consoles; pushing these formats would have about the same numbers coming into the market thus making it an anything goes playing field hands down, the small amount of PS3's is giving HD-DVD a lead in the race.

You have to use common sense when it comes to $1000 DVD players and $600 dollar Game Systems, I went in to EB games last night to pick some points for Robo Blitz and No one was checking out the PS3 and the store employee told me everybodies checking out Wii60, im not telling you lies.

[ScorpioKyle]

oh i believe you, at my work i've had 10x the amount of people asking if we had Wii's in stock over PS3's, and customers (not normal gamer customers, but mom and dad customers) saying they read or have seen that the PS3 isn't as superior to the 360 as the price would suggest.

As for the new Disc format, i think it will not be decided for a long time, and by the time the market is ready for this new format, something better will be out. A Huge chunk of the consumer market has just latched onto DVDs in the past few years. I still get people asking if we carry certain movies on VHS. It won't be until HDTVs reach a critical mass that either format will be more than a Niche market.

[MicroGamer]

to see if I could find a Wii out there someplace (that's a joke, I'm giving up until after Christmas), but....I did manage to find a HD-DVD unit for the 360, the last one in the store, at a Best Buy that might be considered relatively remote (if any Best Buy location CAN be considered remote). I haven't seen one anywhere and likely won't again for a while, so i figured I better grab it quick and head quietly to the checkout. I just watched King Kong, and the quality is better than DVD by quite a bit. So HD-DVD has managed to get a foothold in at least one more house. GO HD-DVD!!!

[AuburnTiger]

The fact is, if your getting the PS3 your getting a blu ray player, so why would you get an HD DVD player?

[THAMMER1]

How about Blue RAY is getting its @ss kicked!? Is that a good enough reason for you.

[AuburnTiger]

The standard fanboy comment.

[Thugbot187]

The question should be how are you going to get your hands on a PS3 to get a BLU-RAY player. Wait I forgot Sony can't make enough. By the time they start making enough PS3's the Press will have killed any hope for recovery with the negitive PR.

[QuietMan69]

PS3 will not be able to produce enough to make an impact over the next 9 months. And each month that goes by Blue ray falls behind Hd-DVD that much farther. HD-DVD will reach critical mass first and the greedy studios will start to flood content for that format. So unless Blue Ray picks up sales shortly that war could be over before it even gets started

[Marriot VP]

Judging PS3 so early like this is like expecting a New-born baby to have a full time job.

[MicroGamer]

they needed to hit the ground running with an abundance of units available, killer titles at launch, and a price that people don't mind paying. They failed on all three counts. A killer online service would have been nice, as well, but they dropped the ball there, too. They have to step up their game dramatically if they want to stay in it this time around. Every day that goes by that they aren't making substantial progress towards the goal of being #1, is another day that they fall farther and farther behind. Eventually 360 and Wii will get so far ahead of them in sales that they may as well just pick up their marbles and go home. And for those that think Sony put the PS3 out to make gamers happy, take off the fanboy glasses for just a minute. Krazy Kenny Kutaragi has already stated that the primary goal of PS3 is not to be the best gaming system, but to be the cheapest Blu-Ray player, so all they care about is pushing their proprietary format into as many homes as possible. If they happen to get some good games written for the system, it's just a nice side benefit, not their primary focus.

[power of Green]

#4 like who?. You can say the same thing about 360, if you're getting a 360 why would you get a Blu-ray player?, now think about how much cheaper the HD-DVD players are and the number of 360 fans and how hard the add-ons is to get plus PS3's numbers and how long it takes to make them.

[Nodoze]

I think the key consideration here is with respect to the target audience. Will the vast majority of PS3 owners be rushing out to buy 2 to 3 Blu Ray movies at a time.....doubtful. Will some of them, sure they will, but in almost all cases the PS3 is being purchased to play GAMES not movies. The fact that it can do both is simply a nice to have, and not a must have.

Now let's look at another aspect, that of the licensee. In the case of Blu Ray, there was/is a shortage of the laser diodes. As such Sony scarfed the lions share to be able to pump out the meager number of PS3's. At what expense you might ask? Well it was done at the expensive of delivering these diodes to their respective Licensees (Pioneer, Samsung, and even Sony themselves). Almost all of those diodes went to support the PS3.

What is the point? Well the point is that the people who are buying the Toshiba HD-DVD player are buying to play MOVIES not games. Additionally the people who are buying the 360 HD-DVD add on are doing to play MOVIES not games. Why is that important? It is important because these are the people who most assuredly will be picking up 2 to 3 titles at a time to support their shiny new players. This isnt' even taking into consideration that the VC1 codec is wiping the floor with the MPEG 2 being used by most of the Sony discs. Sony is also resorting to some low tactics to keep the penetration of HD-DVD from taking hold, forcing stores to 'bury' the HD-DVD players. This is well documented on the AVS forums. What are they afraid of? That a player costing half as much will outperform the Blu Ray hardware? BINGO we have a winner.

Joe consumer likes value (HD-DVD wins here)
Joe consumer likes movies (HD-DVD selection wins here)
Joe consumer knows what HD and DVD are (HD- DVD wins here)

Joe consumer has no earthly idea what the hell blu ray is (sounds a bit like a martian weapon of some sort). I don't care how much advertising Sony does, I don't care how much they push this with the Hollywood studios as being the format of choice. Once the HD-DVD penetration starts taking hold, the studio executives will realize that supporting HD-DVD over Blu Ray is a no brainer.

Most executives are still pissed at Sony for the UMD debacle. Soon they will see that this is more of the same from the company that promises the world......

6 Million PS3's by the end of 2006? Ok lets take the 400,000 that have been produced, subtract that from the goal of 6 million, and WHOILA we assume that Sony is going to produce 5,600,000 more consoles in the next 25 days?

If you believe that one, you deserve to dance on the deck of the Titanic.

[ScorpioKyle]

yep, look at how well having the PSP play UMD movies did for that format.... comparing apples and oranges, but still. There may be a spike for novelty factor alone.

[richie007bond]

Its a bit of a mess really folks who knows who will win but my bets are on HD DVD.The thing is sony banked all its eggs in one baskit THE PS3 but things are not going to well for sony this time round,its a far far different world now compared to when DVD was first released,people were stuck with VHS for over 20 years before DVD crashed into the market,VHS was old and people were crying out for a new and fresh format espeshaly because DVD picture and sound quality was so good and the fact you didnt need to rewind the film.So dvd is still fairly new folks and still looks good today,DVD will be around for a long time yet people lol something i think Sony never bargined for.Forcing blue ray on consummers with the ps3 may just well be sonys downfall,i for one will not buy blue ray movies when i get my ps3 maybe in a year or 2 when the price drop which alas for sony may be to late

[JasonXE]

a mil consoles sold worldwide by the end of the year for ps3. Europe will have to wait till fall 07 unless they ship like 20k over there lol.

[MicroGamer]

when they intimidated Lik-Sang into shutting down their business. If anyone could have gotten PS3's into the hands of European consumers, it would have been L-S. Copyright and patent issues, notwithstanding, Sony needs to have someone pushing the format in Europe right now so that HD-DVD doesn't get the 6 month head start that it has everywhere else, not in the spring and since Sony Europe can't deliver, they need to let someone else do it. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I know that L-S wouldn't have been able to deliver enough to totally ruin the official launch, but they would have delivered enough to keep the buzz going about PS3 because a few fanboys would have them and be showing them off to friends and family who might then have bought after the launch. A lot of Europeans depended on Lik-Sang to get the things that weren't available by any other means in Europe, and now Sony is really pissing them off by cutting off their main source of supply. There is so much bad blood for Sony over there, I don't think many people are still looking forward to the PS3 launch.

[whateva]

what they thought that it was going to take over the world in a day or something

[DJ]

It's crazy how angry they get over consumer electronics. Unless the PS3 sold 8 million units on day one, they would've said the same thing. But it's impossible, so meh.

It was inevitable that they would act this way.

[dissectionalrr]

if blu-ray fails sony will be in some serious, serious trouble. good thing you sony fanboys payed an extra $200 to be future proof! dont worry, when they quit making movies on bd-rom you can just watch the 5th element a bunch of times until its worth it ;) lol. that library ROCKS (sarcasm).

[timmyp53]

.

[timmyp53]

.

[timmyp53]

but nice variety ..i just read an article last week about bd surpassing hddvd..w/e umd will be supported and bd will most def. be supported lets jux wait and see... im on psp. who ever said psp web browser suck? its faster than my cp at times on wifi. psp all the way!

[timmyp53]

but nice variety ..i just read an article last week about bd surpassing hddvd..w/e umd will be supported and bd will most def. be supported lets jux wait and see... im on psp. who ever said psp web browser suck? its faster than my cp at times on wifi. psp all the way!

[timmyp53]

but nice variety ..i just read an article last week about bd surpassing hddvd..w/e umd will be supported and bd will most def. be supported lets jux wait and see... im on psp. who ever said psp web browser suck? its faster than my cp at times on wifi. psp all the way!

[Funky Town_TX]

Nearly a year and a half ago I wrote a column saying that Blu-Ray wins or nothing does. This showcases the reality of doing predictions because while the analysis held up, events did not pan out as anticipated and by any current measure HD-DVD will end this year with a decisive win.

The basis for the prediction, which did accurately point out that Sony’s win here might actually cost them more than a loss, was the PS3 and the forecast volumes for that product. Back in August of 2005 we did know that HD-DVD, which used DVD production technology, would be easier to bring to market but it simply did not seem reasonable that Sony would put their PlayStation franchise at risk for anything but a technology they were absolutely certain they could bring to market on time.

That turned out to be incorrect. The problems with Blu-Ray have created extreme cost and execution problems for Sony and now their premier division (instead of being the profit center for Sony) is predicting they will take a $1.5B loss next year largely resulting from this decision. To put this in perspective, just think what would happen if Apple’s iPod group, instead of generating massive profit, suddenly dropped into massive loss. Now you can see why the Sony PlayStation division just changed out their top executives.

Why HD-DVD is Wining

When you talk to either the HD-DVD or the Blu-Ray camp you get the sense that neither actually watches movies much. Both cite features as the reason why folks will pick one or the other. Yes there is a lame shooting game in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Blu-Ray) and there are a ton of things you can do interactively in HD-DVD (including changing car colors in one scene in The Fast and Furious III: Tokyo Drift). But the movie market moves on quality of movie, price of player, and price and availability of media.

At launch HD-DVD players were about half the price of Blu-Ray players and the movie price for HD-DVD is generally running about $5 less. In addition, many of the new HD-DVD movies also have regular DVD side which means that buyers, most of which will have both HD-DVD and DVD decks, will get better value with HD-DVD than with Blu-Ray – that’s the theory anyways.

All that being said, the killing blow may have been done by Microsoft who decided to bring to market a $200 HD-DVD option for their Xbox 360 which has been in market a year longer than Sony and is projected to have a near 20x installed base advantage by year end (10M Xbox 360 to 600K PS3). Note that both projections are aggressive but Sony was supposed to originally ship 2M PS3s into the market during the 4th quarter and actual numbers (given they had under 200K at launch) may be closer to 400K. And with a recall possible there is a chance they might not even make that. Add to this that the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive is for movies only, so each one counts for movie viewing while PS3s may not be used to watch movies and you have a situation where the active movie player advantage by year-end should be between 4x and 6x better for HD-DVD over Blu-Ray.

Finally, HP who had been a big Blu-Ray supporter and dominates the Media Center PC market, introduced a $100 HD-DVD upgrade for their PCs (Sony’s Blu-Ray VIAO solution was just dropped to $749). The impact of this last move is still too early to measure but there is no comparably priced (not even close) solution using Blu-Ray.

If you go to Amazon and look you can see HD-DVDs are solidly ahead and this is before the impact of either the Microsoft or the HP moves, many of which won’t be opened until Christmas or haven’t yet been shipped (HP).

Now Sony will stick with a technology for years after the market has decided on another path and they do have some very strong supporters which include Dell, Apple, and Disney. Dell traditionally has been the PC bellwether company, Apple has the most loyal customer base, and Disney is the only Studio that people ask for by name. So these folks, particularly Sony, could drag this on for years. But if that is the case not only will many in the industry not make money, Sony will probably lose the most because they are still the ones doing the heavy lifting (In addition, after the battery problems, neither Dell nor Apple is as close to Sony as they had been).

Right now it appears impossible for Blu-Ray to gain a substantial lead on HD-DVD, even after massive investment, they likely could only close the gap. If the HD market depends on the emergence of one as a standard and Blu-Ray no longer has a chance to be that standard, how long will it be before the Blu-Ray supporters follow HP and switch sides?

Do You Want One Standard?

Now you can evidently help drive this if you are so inclined. There is a petition that has been set up for you to voice your support if you believe that there should be only one and HD-DVD is that one. You can find the petition here . Evidently they had collected 2,300 signatures at the time of this writing.

The petition was put together by HD NOW where the folks have collected a rather interesting list of supporting material which goes far farther than I have on supporting the conclusion that we’ve prematurely crossed over to the point where HD-DVD has won the High Definition DVD competition.

Does Blu-Ray Die?

Blu-Ray has substantial storage capacity advantages for data and could survive as a high capacity personal computer storage medium. While expensive, one non-Sony vendor’s upcoming Blu-Ray laptop solution costs around $800 on top of a $3000 notebook but it gives that product an unmatched removable media capability. But this is a vastly better storage solution for a high-end PC it isn’t a high volume high definition movie watching solution.

So BluRay could indeed survive but probably not for movies only for PS3 games and high-end optical backup. The real question is does the PS3 survive or whether there will ever be a PS4. Some are saying that the PS3 is in deep trouble and some are saying the PS4 will never arrive with massive game defections from PS3 to Xbox.

Wrapping Up

The market wants one solution for High Definition video and we are already starting to see high definition downloads through services like Xbox live. Apple’s iTV is expected to go even further when it launches early next year. It may actually be too late for either of these platforms to move; if folks move aggressively to downloads for high definition content and if High Definition pay per view cable offerings continue to improve, even if I’m correct and HD-DVD has won, it may have actually prevailed too late in the process to survive for long.

Be that as it may, with a 4x to 6x advantage by year end, you’d have to conclude that HD-DVD has reached a point where it can’t lose and Blu-Ray is only now in a position to ensure both platforms lose. That last option still appears most likely if the market doesn’t move aggressively to one HD platform.

link
http://news.digitaltrends.c...

[blackmagic]

Does anyone have any idea how many hd-dvd add-on drives for the 360 have been sold?

[Thugbot187]

I read it's like 20% of the number of Xbox360's sold. However they are saying you can't find them because they have been selling out quickly. So the 20% could very well be a lot higher if there were more in stock.

[MicroGamer]

that Microsoft is in the same boat as Sony when it comes to availability of blue laser diodes, which is why they are hard to find. I have only seen one on a store shelf since they were released, and grabbed it because I figured I might not see one again for a while. This is the reason why building the Hi-Def player into the game console was such a bad idea for Sony. If they had used DVD-9 for games, there would be no problem with PS3's being out there on the market right now and at much lower price. A stand alone system doesn't screw up your console production when your parts supplies dry up.

[bladerunner]

Who cares who wins the next movie storage format, at least sony went for a true next gen gaming system with a next gen storage medium,it should be pretty funny in a year or so when xbox games come on three or four discs and what the hell good is the xbox HD add on, it's only for movies!

[Scrumptious]

all this weight on the PS3.. HD-DVD and Poo-Ray players have been out for months now, and HD-DVD is spankin Poo-Ray. The second generation of Toshibas units are coming out and will further puunk the Poo-Ray's players with quicker load times and 1080p all at a cheaper price and superior video quality.

Just for fun I went to best buy the other day and they had Sony's Poo-Ray demo disk which claimed to compare DVD to Poo-ray side by side. What a lugh as the dvd looked like cheap VHS porn from the 80's. I wonder if anyone believes this crap?