Consoles make up bulk of high-def movie player sales

I don't care about HD movies.

The news that consoles are outselling stand-alones is far from surprising. Honestly, though, I think the fact that Blockbuster has now decided to carry only BluRay will do more to decide the war than PS3's inclusion of the drive.

And we need to know if HD discs sales are replacing DVD sales before we can say that HD is making a dent in DVD; we could be in a movie sales slump, as I imagine happens during the summer when more megahits are at the theater than are on the new release wall.

I have a 360 and an HDTV, and don't think that an add-on is even worth it to play HD movies. They look a bit nicer, but it is not worth it.

Buying a standalone player seems like a complete rip-off. A game console is worth much more than a movie player imo, and always will be.

This "war" will truly be decided when more people actually have HDTV's and HD movie players reach affordable prices near that of DVD.

I dont care for HD movie players. But if i really really want to watch a movie on my HDTV for rental, I'll just rent it through xbox live marketplace. You dont need an HD player and you can still watch HD movies on your 360. The player only lets it read from the disc.

155,000 stupids Xbox 360's fanboy`s, they know blue ray will be the standard format for movies and games

@4. Oh didnt know MS was allowing 1080p movie downloads, thought they were only 720p. I know my Blu-ray movies are in 1080p.

@ 1 Crono
I don't care about HD movies.

You dont care because the HDDVD player for the 360 its a loser.......

The futere its here only when Sony say its here....

wow cret, awesome trolling.... douche

Why they always count TOTAL Xbox 360's HD DVD players, with US only 1.500.000 PS3? Why not just say … “there are 155.000 HD DVD players against 5.000.000+ PS3 Blu ray players worldwide”?

@7 So in the Sony Future. The spelling has changed to futere?

Good to know.

Didn't Blockbuster recently state that Blu-ray movies is about all they rent of the 2 HD formats? Sounds like a lot of people are watching them.

This is a suprise how? Hardcore gamers and video games in general has always been the driving force of new technology. The rest of the people are simply along for the ride until our hard spent money makes things a little more affordable for the masses.

It's also been shown hardcore gamers tend to purchase more outside of their medium as well, as in more music, movies, clothing, cars, so on and so forth. Hardcore gamers are a driving force in the economy... go us!

I have no interest in buying a blu-ray or HD-DVD player at this time even though I have a HDTV because early adopters always get the shaft. I bought a minidisc player in 93 or 94 and a superior model was quickly released. No biggie, I expect devices to always improve, but then DVD came out. Early players had on-screen UIs worse than VCRs of the era, they were slow, and they were unreliable. Worst yet, DVD players were notoriously unreliable with recordable DVD formats even years after the commercial release of those discs. I found that to be completely unacceptable. This blue-ray/HDDVD generation's probably not going to be any different. I'll wait until 2010 before buying one because by then they're going to work as well as they'll ever work.

What's more important to Sony? The PS3 or Blu-Ray? Because its quite possible (though obviously things may change) that Sony has sacrificed the PS3 to establish Blu-Ray as the next-gen movie format.

@10

Well, at least you not challenge numbers. Good sign…

10. @7 So in the Sony Future. The spelling has changed to futere?

Futere or Future you understood

Right....?

The sales of HD players will increase the holiday season after HDTV sales are flat because of high penetration. I would guess that since HDTV prices are not decreasing as rapidly as they were a year ago, you could see a rise in the subsequent HD player purchases this holiday season as well as price drops in cost of HD movies. HD players are still in the early adopter phase just like HDTVs were a few years ago. It's only a matter of time before they become a staple in the living room.

Also, for those that don't appreciate the image quality of 1080p really need to get some glasses. The difference is as drastic as going from mono audio to 5.1 surround sound with a good subwoofer.

when your $600 game console has no games to play you might as well use it for something else i guess

@8
"In the HD DVD realm, a Microsoft representative told CNet UK that the company had sold 155,000 units of the Xbox 360's HD DVD player in the States."

RTFA.

game consoles also represent the demographic that spends money.

I've done the XBL marketplace HD download as well, and I would prefer it to buying a HD-dvd/Blu-ray player. Sure, you can argue that it's only 1080i, but then I'll counter with "My HDtv doesn't support 1080p..." but, I think we've all concluded that the difference between the two resolutions is nominal at best.

Despite being a gamer, I probably will not endorse either format for a while.

Downloading is the future [futere, ibid.].

i prefer regular ol dvd. With my dvds, i can play them on my tv, in my computer, in my laptop, even in my kitchen, without buying new equipment. With bluray/hddvd I would have to buy new players for all of those.

I'll get into HD movies when HD movie players/the movies themselves are at the same pricerange that DVD players are at right now.

AKM: that 155,000 HD DVDs sold figure is US only, so it's appropriate to compare it to US PS3 sales.

@23

I didn’t know it. Sorry.

How many they sold worldwide ?

I can honestly say that I don't own either type of DVD player. However I also will freely admit that I want HD-DVD to win the war.

BluRay can go to hell for all I care. And thats just because sony decided to force it on consumers by putting it in the ps3.

I might pick up and HD-DVD player in the next few months if I have some extra change lying around. How much do they cost?

Everyone is forgetting about drives for PC's. I know the Dell xps m2010 only ships with the blueray drive now in the US, and that the 360's hdd drive is plug and play with vista. But i still think both sides are going to loose.
Digital distribution for the win!

I'll never adopt the new HD movie format when HD movies cost $25-$30. I mean, I don't want to pay that much for something that lasts for barely 2 hours. I probably won't watch it again.

I'd rather spend that money on a video game.

HD discs stand for 0.2% of global video media out there. There are even more UMD players then HD-players.

Still it accounts for like 2% of all gaming posts. I mean... what does a plasic disk has to do with consoles. Games are driven toward procedural content because HD's and Memory improvements don't increase as much as GPU/CPU improvements. So games will actually become smaller. And those games that will be too big are just games that include video. And no disc format will ever be big enough because the formats are made to handle movies!

It can be important but as you may have noticed: Nintendo's old hardware sells like hell. Look at WOW, it's not like the game is that impressive to look at. So why don't we have more posts about crazy ideas, those are the ones that change the world of games not some plastic disk.

i gotta agree with the whole id rather just download HD movies from the xbl marketplace, much easier and cheaper and i have no more space because i have so many damn dvd movies, not about to do this shit again

Winning the format will definitely drive console sales in a few years, that is if PS3 is still around...

@16
I did understand cause I've studied multiple languages. Thankfully Idiot was one of them.

Rumor has that Toshiba is going to packing a HD-DVD drive in all their laptops from 2008 onward. They shipped over 9 million lappies in 2006.

That should balance things out a bit.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=40162

Anyone who doesnt think there's a big difference between DVD and the HD formats is either half-blind, and/or has a crap or small HDTV. The difference is at least as big of a difference as DVDs were to VHS tapes! The 360 add on drive is a steal if you ask me, and paying 5 bucks more for a movie that truly rivals the film, if not betters it, in regards to the quality. I say stop worrying about which format wins and just pick up a player and some movies and enjoy.

As far as the XBL marketplace goes, the downloads are nice for when I just want to rent a flick, but lack of surround sound and features, and spotty quality drove me to support the hard formats still.

Microsoft already went on record saying "if blu-ray won, we'd just make an external blu-ray player for the 360". the benefits of modularity.

movie playback on a game console should be bonus, not required. if not included free, it should be an OPTION, not a $200 early investment requirement that so far, has done nothing for games except exclude gamers.



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I dont really care about HD movies if you have a 360 you have best of the best.........
Apart from the Halo 3 news and expected availability of more than 300 games by the end of the year, there were a few more interesting tid bits about the XboX 360.

Vahe Torossian claims Microsoft has sold more than 11 million XboX 360 consoles so far. On average, 1.7 games were sold per console, which amounts to 18.7 million games in total.

Vole's VP Vahe also claim the XboX 360 is the number one next generation console out there. He is probably right, but keep in mind that the much younger Wii is catching up quickly. I won't even mention Playstation 3.

#33, when did Microsoft say that? I remember reading that Microsoft said they would never change their format.

Seems like sony's insistence on including the blueray drive in the PS3 has finally paid off for them.

It might have cost them dear in the console market, but its probably won them the format war.

That said, under 200,000 standalone players is pathetic, and kinda shows that there isn't a lot of appetite for EITHER format at the moment.. or the format war has put people off a lot.

Movies are WAY more mainstream than games, so the fact that even the most expensive, worst selling games console has outsold BOTH FORMATS standalone players combined by a factor of more than 5 to 1 shows how little people are interested in HD movies.

My bet is for downloadable movies to overtake both formats in the near future. Much in the way that MP3s killed off any hope for SACDs.

Now that microsoft looks like it might lose the physical format war, expect them to throw all their power behind downloadable movies on both PC, Zune (cough) and 360.

i own a PS3, and i own an HDTV (40" LCD 720p Samsung).

since i've gotten my TV (earlier this month), i've been in an HD frenzy. gobbling up as many worthwhile movies and trailers as i can get my hands on.

Casino Royale in HD: amazing
Pirates of the Carribean (part one, not the craptacular part two): ditto
The Prestige: you guessed it; great.
MI3: awesome

those that are saying they don't care about HD are primarily people that have not seen it in action, and refuse to give it a chance because of the entry price.

you know the moment prices of HDTVs drop to below $500, each and every one of the dissenters will rush out and pick them up (though, you can get 26" HDTVs for about $500 nowadays, but it seems like everyone wants the ginormous sets these days; me included. lol).

the PS3 is a great Blu Ray player, and a superb DVD player and upscaler.

i really hated the PS2 DVD player, but it was the only one i had (my stand alone DVD player broke about a month before i got my PS2), the PS3 player works perfectly.

it's a no brainer that gamers are the ones shifting the format war balance: most of us are not 10 years old anymore.

most of us over the age of 25 have parents that just aren't technologically savvy (my mom is 57 and barely knows how to work a DVD player). at the time of the previous format war, our country was still realing from a little something called the Civil Rights movement, so fancy video formats were of little priority.

nowadays, we have 13 year olds that know how to build PCs from the ground up.

then us older folks, who've been gaming since the 80's, realize that we have jobs (as well as other real world financial issues like rent, car payments, and wives and fiancees), and now have the means to support that habit we have called gaming.

considering that i don't live at home with my parents, yet i still love gaming and movies and what have you, having a console (like a PS3), that allows me to game, watch movies, and all sorts of other neat things rolled into one without the need for additional components is a dream for me.

i bought my PS3 in February. at the start of June, i ordered an $8.99 HDMI cable from Newegg on a Monday, and by Friday i got it in the mail, the same day i bought my HDTV for about $1500.

sure, it was a big investment, but me and my fiancee haven't regretted it yet, and have been enjoying both movies and gaming in HD all month.

i didn't think i'd be interested in HDTV and Blu Ray, much like how i wasn't interested in DVD when i first heard about it.

but just like before, after experiencing it for myself, i'm sold on it.

even my mom wants a Blu Ray player and HDTV after seeing Casino Royale and Pirates of the Carribean on Blu Ray. prior to my showing it to her, she had no idea what Blu Ray was.

@33, technically speaking, blu-ray movie playback on ps3 is a bonus, since the blu-ray drive is needed to play game discs to begin with.

@34, "On average, 1.7 games were sold per console, which amounts to 18.7 million games in total." Are you sure? Attach rate of 1.7 sounds low for even ps3, much less xbox 360.

bl13,

how is blu-ray "needed for games" when all the multiplatform games also come out on DVD? even big first party titles WarHawk and Socom wouldn't fill a DVD.

and Kevin, it was a loooong time ago, about the time they introduced the HD-DVD player.


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@Attach rate of 1.7 sounds low for even ps3, much less xbox 360.@

It’s because when MS count 3 replaced consoles as 3 “new” consoles sold it make them look good on paper. But they still have no more the 6 million “real” users at most.

How many peoples on this blog on their second or third box?

"But they still have no more the 6 million “real” users at most."

wow AKM, what other things can you pull out of your ass?

and i'm still on my november '05 unit.



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Digi, yes not a lot of games won't fit on DVD at the moment (R:FoM being the poster child I guess), but in 3 years I expect there to be a lot more of them. Especially when you consider Blue Dragon is already 3 DVD's on 360. My point is, if you determine the usefulness and potential of any new storage format only by how it's used in the first 6 months, we'd probably still be blowing into cartridges now.

Well said figboy. those that "don't care" = those that "don't have".

B13,

RFOM is a bad example because all of its (very simplistic) cut scenes were FMV in HD completely unnecessarily.

also a big reason we moved from cartridges was because disc media was so cheap. cheap enough in fact to include multiple discs if needed..

and don't dismiss the cartridge so easily, moving to bigger disc media also introduced that lovely thing we know as load times.



.

The 360 has an attach rate of close to 5 games per console, not 1.7-Putting sales figures of software around the 60 million mark. The Xbox brand has always been the leader in attach rates due to their more "hardcore" demographic following.

Source:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=11796

Matt B, i have and don't care. what's that mean?

you keep trying to turn this into a elitist Have/Have Not thing that's really distasteful. you fault people for not having enough money to casually spend on a totally unproven technological toy.

why are PS3 arguments always about others being 'broke'? you weren't saying that last generation with the PS2 or the PS1.

back then it was about 'games', not technology or movie playback, remember those days?


.

"Well said figboy. those that "don't care" = those that "don't have"."

doesnt mean those that dont have are the only ones that dont care, and doesnt mean that those that dont are are only ones that dont have.

"Well said figboy. those that "don't care" = those that "don't have"."

doesnt mean those that dont have are the only ones that dont care, and doesnt mean that those that dont care are only ones that dont have.

@46

You have to remember that these are the same people that were saying "graphics don't matter, it's the games" for the PS2. Now that they've got the graphics and no games it's "Man, Talladega Nights sure looks good in 1080p!"