Sony giving in to digital movie distribution = acknowledging MS was right?

[alpha_dk]

libellule said:

alpha_dk said:

libellule said:
To repeat myself :

IF BR becomes mainstream in 2 years

Digital distribution will be mainstream in 7 years !!!

Also, PS3, ALL SKU, have HDD AND BR

On the Xbox360, NO SKU has BR

and only 2 sku on 3, has HDD

So which console offer is the more "coherent" offer at the end ???

Digital Distribution is already more mainstream than Blu-Ray.  All you have to do is look at the viewership of Hulu, one of MANY digital distribution outlets, which in a given month is SEVERAL TIMES the LTD sales of Blu-Ray.

Don't you get it?  Digital Distribution has already beaten Blu-Ray.  It already has a greater mindshare, and greater usage than Blu-Ray.  At the same time, DVD sales are up more than Blu-Ray sales (if you calculate the revenue increase/unit increase from this article, you'll see that most of the physical media gains were in DVD, not blu-ray).

Right now, the movie industry is in a transition from DVDs to digital distribution.  I am sure BR will last a while, as will DVDs (much as the CD has), but the future is written in stone, and it has already started.

==> To me, ur 2 links prove NOTHING about what ur are claiming except maybe that consumers still prefer buy things "in the old style" (BR/DVD) over digital distribution

Also my last link http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/07/18/nielsen-videoscan-high-def-market-share-for-week-ending-july-13t/

explain you why BR is slowly "eating" DVD sales.

"Online is the future, DVD is the present and BR somewhere between the 2."

Your link is worthless when it comes to the mass market.  Cherrypicking the top X BR movies to compare is a fallacious argument.

Looking at the whole state of the industry as in my third link, you see both unit sales and revenue growing at a rate of 1.1%

We all know that BR movies bring in more revenue than DVD sales per item.  Therefore, if BR were driving the growth in physical media, the revenue would be growing at a rate faster than the unit sales; more money per sale = more money growth than unit growth.  However, because the two are equal, we know that any growth in BR movie sales is offset by more growth in DVD sales.

Let me repeat.

If BR sales have gone up 10 Million Units, DVD sales have risen MORE than 10 million units.  That's not what we saw in the DVD transition; by this point, even though VHS was still the market leader, it was on a downslope as people adopted DVD.  DVD, on the other hand, is still on an upslope (one that is faster than BR, as it turns out)

At the same time, Digital Downloads have the greatest upslope of them all.

You said, and I quote,

IF BR becomes mainstream in 2 years

Digital distribution will be mainstream in 7 years !!!

I am showing you the numbers that say you're wrong.  Digital Distribution is already showing itself to have a much greater chance to hit the mainstream than BR. 

It has faster growth as well as a larger userbase right now, a smaller barrier to entry, and a diverse, healthy ecosystem of companies competing for it.  It has all the marks of being the true replacement to DVD; BR, at this point, will end up being a niche product like UMD (that is, it still gets the movies, but will be nowhere near the driving force in the industry).