I stopped posting the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD Nielson VideoScan data as soon as HD DVD officially called it quits. There really is no point in beating a dead horse, after all. The real battle now for Blu-ray is to take on standard DVD, which is in nearly every home in U.S. and in the majority of homes worldwide. This battle will certainly be far more difficult than beating HD DVD, but the sales data will actually be far more relevant as to how quickly Blu-ray is being adopted... and whether or not DVD sales are slowing as a result.
Comparing Blu-ray sales data to total DVD sales data is no easy task, however. The sheer volume of DVDs available in the retail market makes it nearly impossible to hypothesize with any accuracy how many total DVD discs are sold in any given week. Thus, Nielson VideoScan has chosen to compare only the Top 20 selling DVDs to the Top 20 Blu-ray Discs to track Blu-ray vs. DVD sales. While this method results in interesting results for comparing the top selling discs on both formats, it is inherently biased towards Blu-ray as it is comparing an equal number of titles on both formats. Whilst Blu-ray has around 600 titles released in the U.S., DVD has tens of thousands of released titles.
Still, here are the results for the week ending 6/8:
Source: Nielson VideoScan via www.homemediamagazine.com
9% of the market (at least among top titles) is almost an order of magnitude jump from about a year ago, and is continuing to rise. A market of $10 million a week (in Q2) is nothing to ignore, and those claiming Blu-ray will only continue as a niche format apparently aren't looking at the rapidly growing sales data.
Source: Nielson VideoScan via www.homemediamagazine.com
The above charts show some interesting data. The chart on the left shows the top 20 Blu-ray discs by volume for last week (the 20 titles that would be compared in the pie graph above). As usual, the latest releases tended to fare the best. One thing that's VERY nice to see, is the return of Paramount to the chart, with 2 new release titles in the Top 5. On the other hand, it's really sad to see Meet the Spartans on ANY top 10 list... unless its a list of films to burn for warmth. There really is no accounting for taste.
The chart on the right shows a head-to-head matchup between Blu-ray title sales and the same title on DVD. Ignoring the top title (which isn't available on DVD), it's extremely interesting that three titles (Patton, Blade Runner, and There Will Be Blood) actually sold better on Blu-ray than they did on DVD last week. 3 other Blu-ray disc titles sold very close to as well as their DVD counterparts.
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