Egg on faces of Paramount, Dreamworks over Blu-ray

The move last month of Paramount and Dreamworks to give the Blu-ray HD video format the flick in favour of HD DVD for some easy money looks slightly ridiculous in the face of the latest sales figures from video mag site Home Media Magazine based on Nielsen VideoScan First Alert data. It turns out that of the top 10 best selling videos for the week ending August 26, the only two on the list from Paramount and Dreamworks were in Blu-ray format!

The perplexing decision of Paramount and Dreamworks to drop Blu-ray seems even more puzzling when studying the figures for the studios’two top selling HD titles Disturbia (Para/Dreamworks) which was number 8 on the best seller list and Shooter (Paramount) which was number 9. Both top sellers for the studios were in Blu-ray format. What’s more, aggregate sales of both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs of both titles indicates that Blu-ray discs accounted for more than 58% of sales of Shooter and more than 64% of sales of Disturbia.

Which ever way you slice and dice the figures, Blu-ray discs are clearly outselling the same titles in HD DVD format, sometimes by as much as two to one. No doubt, the move by Paramount and Dreamworks will help the cause of HD DVD but, based on the latest sales figures, it could come at a cost to both studios.

The saving grace for Paramount and Dreamworks is that HD video currently accounts for just 2.5% all video sales so the studios may have figured that passing up a reported US$150 million from the HD DVD camp when DVD still dominates and can be played equally as well on the HD players of both formats would be stupid. The studios can always return to the Blu-ray format if it prevails a couple of years down the track and if HD DVD somehow wins the war, Paramount and Dreamworks will have been vindicated in their decision.

Meanwhile, the bad news for HD DVD supporters last week is that Blu-ray’s strongest supporter among the studios, Sony Pictures, dominated the aggregated best seller’s list with four titles in the top 10 – Black Hawk Down (4), Perfect Strangers (6), Casino Royale (8), and House of Flying Daggers (10). Blu-ray exclusive studio Disney also figured strongly with second placed Wild Hogs.