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Forums - General Discussion - Is Blu Ray profitable for their "inventors"?

Specifically for Sony?

I think that the way Sony sees that Blu Ray will be beneficial (profitable) for them is to drive HARDWARE sales.  That is, TVs, players, Movie sales will be driven up due to Blu Ray.  And historically, their products have carried a premium due to their strong branding of quality products.

In their past few fiscal years, their revenue and profit growth was basically driven by their Electronics Department and OBVIOUSLY not their Games Division

NOT SPECIFICALLY, royalties - as some may think or claim.

After all, whoever "invented" the DVD and/or CD formats - (whoever they may be) - are not exactly AWASH with cash from the "royalties" of these vastly successful formats.

Discuss.



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The cd was very good to sony and philips (the creators)

The dvd was very good to toshiba and its partners.  Why else would they risk billions to have a chance at a repeat performance with hddvd.



with the predicted 1 billion dollars in sales for this year, I would expect so.



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It's not profitable... yet. As far as I know.

They spent too much trying to blow away HD-DVD....and if you include PS3 losses in the mix... (They count PS3's in the mix for Blu-ray players.)

It'll really depend. The Public really wasn't snapping up Blu-ray like everyone projected... the economy problems in the US aren't helping.

In a couple years we'll see Blu-ray may end up replacing DVD, it may be a Niche product or it may just be the next Laserdisc.

It's all up in the air currently.

Also actually the patents to CDs and DVDs were CRAZY profitable.



Kasz216 said:

It's not profitable... yet. As far as I know.

They spent too much trying to blow away HD-DVD....and if you include PS3 losses in the mix... (They count PS3's in the mix for Blu-ray players.)

It'll really depend. The Public really wasn't snapping up Blu-ray like everyone projected... the economy problems in the US aren't helping.

In a couple years we'll see Blu-ray may end up replacing DVD, it may be a Niche product or it may just be the next Laserdisc.

It's all up in the air currently.

Also actually the patents to CDs and DVDs were CRAZY profitable.

I dont think Laser Disc ever had as much market share as Blu-ray does now. And Blu-ray has shown signs of growth which have last been seen by DVD.

Also why the fuck would you include the Ps3 in the mix. I thought we were talking about the SW



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PooperScooper said:
Kasz216 said:

It's not profitable... yet. As far as I know.

They spent too much trying to blow away HD-DVD....and if you include PS3 losses in the mix... (They count PS3's in the mix for Blu-ray players.)

It'll really depend. The Public really wasn't snapping up Blu-ray like everyone projected... the economy problems in the US aren't helping.

In a couple years we'll see Blu-ray may end up replacing DVD, it may be a Niche product or it may just be the next Laserdisc.

It's all up in the air currently.

Also actually the patents to CDs and DVDs were CRAZY profitable.

I dont think Laser Disc ever had as much market share as Blu-ray does now. And Blu-ray has shown signs of growth which have last been seen by DVD.

Also why the fuck would you include the Ps3 in the mix. I thought we were talking about the SW

Cause you need hardware to play the software... PS3 was one of the main forces driving Blu-ray sales.

Therefore it should be counted towards profit or losses of blu-ray software sales.

PS3 is by far the most popular blu-ray player out their... it's more popular then all the other Blu-ray players combined.

(43% of all PS3 owners in the United States watch Blu-ray movies on their PS3 at least once a week.)

If it wasn't for the PS3 Blu-ray wouldn't have half the marketshare it does now. It's as much a part of it as cutting prices on movies and giving them away is.

Regardless just about everyone is DESPERATE to make blu-ray succeed despite it's sluggish improvements. So it's got that behind it which is something Laserdisc never had.  Which is why almost all the blu-ray news articles you see are positive despite them beign well below their expected growth rate.

 



Also. Not sure about Laserdisc.... but Betamax had a higher marketshare then Blu-ray.



HDDVD is actually the wave of the future.



Discussing how profitable Blu-Ray has been for Sony is an amazingly difficult thing to calculate because so much of their revenue from Blu-Ray is interconnected with other things; Blu-Ray benefits Sony's electronics division because it provides a High-Definition content source which is one of the main reasons people are/were reluctant to buy expensive HDTVs that have massive mark-ups, it also benefits them because their movie studios can "remaster" and re-release every "classic" movie which has high margins (if volume is high enough), and Sony also gains because they receive licencing fees for every disc or player sold.

Depending on how you account for the losses in the Playstation division, the monetary transfers to get exclusive studios, and whether you include revenues outside of raw licencing fees will impact how you calculate how profitable it is. Personally, I don't include electronics revenues or revenues from moive studios because (without Blu-Ray) a HD medium was going to be available anyways; at the same time I do include the losses in the Playstation division and monetary transfers to movie studios because this money was spent (primarily) to make Blu-Ray successful.

Right now, Blu-Ray licencing fees on hardware and discs are probably fairly high but so are the costs on the technology licences that make up the Blu-Ray format; and over time these licencing fees will be (drastically) reduced until you can sell a Blu-Ray player for $15 and a Blu-Ray movie for $5 with packaging and turn a profit. The Blu-Ray consortium is also facing massive marketing expenses as they try to make the format more popular, and the "profits" are split across a large group of companies, so the per-company revenue from Blu-Ray is probably tiny at the moment.

Ultimately, with little revenue comming into Sony from Blu-Ray along with massive debts from Blu-Ray I would say that it has been far from profitable for Sony.



Kasz216 said:

It's not profitable... yet. As far as I know.

They spent too much trying to blow away HD-DVD....and if you include PS3 losses in the mix... (They count PS3's in the mix for Blu-ray players.)

It'll really depend. The Public really wasn't snapping up Blu-ray like everyone projected... the economy problems in the US aren't helping.

In a couple years we'll see Blu-ray may end up replacing DVD, it may be a Niche product or it may just be the next Laserdisc.

It's all up in the air currently.

Also actually the patents to CDs and DVDs were CRAZY profitable.

 

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/questex/hom153368MNH/#/14

 

see the graph



PC gaming is better than console gaming. Always.     We are Anonymous, We are Legion    Kick-ass interview   Great Flash Series Here    Anime Ratings     Make and Play Please
Amazing discussion about being wrong
Official VGChartz Folding@Home Team #109453