Casino Royale has become the first high definition title to ship 100,000 units, which was released just recently on March 13th. It has made record sales at retail for the most HD titles sold in one day and also has become the first high definition title to enter Amazon's DVD top 10 sellers list. The first DVD title to hit the 100,000 sales mark was "AIR FORCE ONE" in February 1998 over a period of 11 months. Sales of Blu-ray titles has grown over 700% since the launch of the PlayStation 3 and Sony DADC has so far replicated over two million Blu-ray discs for Sony Pictures, a movie producer which backs the Blu-ray format only.
However, while this news looks good for Blu-ray, if we look at Amazon's Top 100 list, HD DVD has clearly picked up since our last report of Casino Royale's progress just two weeks ago, with a few HD DVD titles already higher ranking than their Blu-ray versions on Amazon. On the 15th of March, the only HD DVD in Amazon's top 100 was "Children of Men" ranking at the #93 spot. This has climbed to #18 at this time of writing, with four other HD DVDs (one combo DVD/HD DVD) now in the Top 100 also. Casino Royale has since fallen to the #35 spot, with three HD DVD titles and no Blu-ray titles ranking above it. The HD DVD title "The Complete Matrix Trilogy" ranks at #30 and the combo DVD/HD DVD title "Happy Feet" ranks at #32. The Blu-ray version of Happy feet ranks lower down at #45. The title "Planet Earth - The Complete BBC Series" DVD series ranks at #14, with the HD DVD version ranking at #64 and the Blu-ray version ranking a little lower down at #73. Note that Amazon updates its top 100 every hour, so these rankings will most likely have changed since this time of writing.
It will be interesting to see how Blu-ray and HD DVD compares over the next few weeks in Amazon's top 100 DVD list in case this is a coincidence at this time of writing. On the other hand, it does show how quickly things change. For example, UMD titles for the PSP originally seemed to be doing very well until just a few months later when its sales quickly fell.
I'm curious about why this is news? HD DVD went *3 months* without any real new releases..... OF COURSE people with HD DVD drives are going to jump and buy when a couple of new movies come out (Happy Feet, Children of Men). And the Matrix box set pre-orders are nothing unexpected either. And these are all rankings that HD DVD has had in the past. It could be argued that HD DVD is pulling out of it's decline a little, but the proof in the pudding will be if any of these titles can REMAIN with decent numbers for any length of time after their release. The Departed was on HD DVD and Blu-Ray, and ranked higher on Amazon on HD DVD then Blu-Ray... but the Blu-Ray version outsold the HD DVD version by 50%, and currently has an amazon ranking 3x higher then the HD DVD counterpart.
There is deffinately a VERY strong support base for HD DVD... but in the end, it's still a much MUCH smaller support base then that for Blu-Ray. So movies sell much better over time on Blu-Ray then on HD DVD, since sales persist longer.
@ Dolphinius_Rex
What chu talkin' 'bout, Willis?
Sure, the numbers will go up and down for the next little while. Blu-ray will pull ahead and then HD DVD will pull ahead. Then, in the not-too-distant future, the guys backing Blu-ray will decide that they have to go back to the drawing board once again. You see, they've figured out a way to get an extra 5 gigs on a single-sided Blu-ray disc. But here's the rub -- because the old players don't support the new "standard", you have to buy all new hardware again.
BAhahahahahahaha.
@ Dukenukem:
Umm.... HD DVD hasn't "pulled ahead" really... they had some higher pre-order numbers, and even now they have dropped dramatically, even just since my last post on the subject. Happy feet is now almost the same ranking on Amazon for both formats, and Children of men has almost lost it's position to Casino Royale. It was a short spike lasting a few days, but overall sales were still >2:1 in favour of Blu-Ray.
You *DO* know that the since inception rate of sales is 100:84.07 in favour of Blu-Ray right?
http://www.videostoremag.com/news/html/breaking_article.cfm?sec_id=2&&article_ID=10323
OOOPS!!!!! Those were the old results I linked to... here are the current sales:
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/questex/hom031807/index.php?startpage=2
Year to data sales are weighted at >2:1 for Blu-Ray, and since inception is 100:84.07 for Blu-Ray.
Until HD DVD can fix their install base, and their lack of content, the gap between Blu-Ray and HD DVD will only increase.
@ Dolphinus_Rex:
Agreed - there's no such thing as HD DVD fixing their install base, people bought them initially before they realized only one movie company was completely backing it. Now they're trying to grab up every decent flick that enters the market, much MUCH farther apart than blu-ray releases.
@ Dolphinius_Rex
I'm less interested in those statistics than I am about the news that Amazon is selling Blu-ray movies at a 50 percent discount. The recent Blu-ray movies being bought are just new PS3 owners wondering what all the fuss is about. I don't expect that trend to continue.
I think the Amazon sale is over. It has been replaced by a big Blu-Ray sale at Buy.com now. 84 different titles I believe, some of them the same as the last sale, and some of them are new.
As for Amazon.com, I believe they make up ~10% of the market, so they are GENERALLY a decent sampling of the behaivour of the total market... however when they have a crazy sale going, or another company has a crazy sale going, it can skew their sales % quite a bit.
But the long and the short of it is that HD DVD sales continue to be surpassed by Blu-Ray sales, and the gap is widening not shrinking.
I wonder if they're going on sale because they know that the Blu-ray market will bottom out soon. Wow, I guess I'd lower my prices too. Or maybe they're doing it because they're scared of HD DVD. They know we're about to leap ahead of them pretty soon, what with all the revisions to the Blu-ray standard. Yeah, I'd be wetting my pants and selling my movies at blow-out prices too. Way to panic, guys.
MUhahahahahaha.
MO, I hope the competition gets dirtier. This can only be good news for the consumer since prices will eventually fall faster in both camps due to this heated battle.
On another note, Blu-ray would be very far behind if Sony didn't subsidize, so to speak, their game console and sold it for what it should of been sold at. They are taking a huge loss selling these units at cost when you factor in all the expenses like for instance labor and research that goes into these next gen consoles. The wild card here is if they are going to be able to sell enough games to overcome the loss of each unit sold. I would like to see figures on that.
Even if $ony DID give us some figures, I'm sure they'd be just more lies or exaggerations. Don't trust 'em, I sez !!!
Agreed, no one would trust Sony's numbers, That's why I generally go by Nielson's numbers, since they're an unbiased source, who were happily reporting HD DVD dominance last year when it was true.
and at Shaolin007:
Toshiba is subsidizing their low end HD DVD players too 
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