Entertainment software set to grow 17% by 2010
GfK: Videogames, Blu-ray will drive lift
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6571170.html
Growth for this year and the next several years will be almost exclusively from the games sector, with game software for all console, PC and handheld platforms expanding to $33.3 billion this year, up 22% from 2007. Games growth will be about 18% in 2009 and 12% in 2010, according to the report.
Home video, meanwhile, will remain virtually flat at either side of $34 billion worldwide through 2010, with growth from the fledgling Blu-ray Disc format compensating for declines in the aging standard DVD.
Blu-ray sales will more than quadruple this year, to $1.5 billion worldwide, according to GfK, then grow 184% in 2009 to $4.1 billion and another 94%, to hit $8 billion in 2010.
Blu-ray has outpaced DVD adoption
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6572676.html
JUNE 23 | The adoption rate of Blu-ray Disc drives has outpaced that of standard-definition DVD players almost a decade ago on both sides of the Atlantic because of gamers buying Sony's PlayStation 3 consoles, which include the high-definition disc drives, according to separate estimates.
As of the end of this year, Blu-ray's third on the market, Western European consumers will have acquired Blu-ray drives at more than six times the rate buyers had bought standard disc players by the end of 1999, U.K.-based Futuresource Consulting said last week. In the U.S., customers are acquiring Blu-ray drives at three times the rate they bought DVD players nine years ago, said Michael Youn, Lionsgate’s VP of strategic planning and business development, at a Las Vegas conference yesterday
Lionsgate reports record first quarter
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i1bbfaf7a505146058e35fc2777bd16e1
Studios and retailers alike are hoping that a higher consumer penetration of Blu-ray players will help reverse a drop in home entertainment spending last year. U.S. customers spent $23.4 billion buying or renting DVDs in 2007, down from $24.1 billion in 2006, according to trade group the Digital Entertainment Group. Studios such as Lionsgate are forecasting about $1 billion in Blu-ray sales this year.
“Longer term, as player prices continue to fall, title availability grows and awareness increases, Blu-ray Disc players will become the product of choice, given the fact that they also play DVD and CD media,” said Jim Bottoms, managing director of corporate development at Futuresource, which was formerly known as Understanding & Solutions. “There will come a time when the branded suppliers focus on this higher capacity drive, mirroring the trend we saw with DVD players replacing CD decks.”
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Lionsgate also is optimistic about the future of home entertainment, with Blu-ray sales more than making up for any slowdown in DVD sales and growing from a projected $1 billion this year to more than $10 billion in 2013, according to company analyst Michael Youn, vp strategic planning and business development.
Acknowledging media reports of a sluggish home entertainment sector that ultimately will consist mostly of digital downloads, Youn noted a highly publicized Forrester Research report from 2003 that predicted DVD sales would drop 9% by 2008 while VOD spending would increase more than 300% to $4.2 billion.
"They were wrong," Youn quipped, noting that DVD sales actually rose 9% over the past five years while VOD spending increased just 30% to $1.3 billion.
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We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
