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Originally Posted by chlngr1970
Units sold is great for marketing purposes, but doesn't mean squat for the bottom line if you have to give 40% of them away for free.
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Originally Posted by Ruined
Very much true. The only reason the BDA has been "ahead all year" is because they have strategically placed buy-one-get-one free sales (where even the free title counts as a "sale") and other software promotions on weeks when HD DVD would otherwise have been ahead in sales. In Q4 there have been more weeks where Sony has given away free movies with purchase of movies in store than weeks where movies were sold normally. Smoke and mirrors for sure, especially in the Q4 now that it is clear HD DVD has regained much of the ground it had lost earlier in the year as evidenced by much closer sales of multiplatform titles.
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Go back and actually read what I wrote and you may get the point that I was making:
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Originally Posted by Me
(The BDA is)accomplishing what they've set out to do which is, at the very least, give the perception that they are indeed leading the format war in disc sales.
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Whether or not you like their tactics, whether or not they're turning a huge profit the Neilsen numbers allow them to market themselves as the HDM sales leader. The average consumer doesn't give a damn about the BDA's bottom line...all they care about are less expensive movies. Similarly, the average consumer is more apt to choose an HDM format based on a percieved sales lead because "
if it sells better then it's more popular, and if it's more popular then it's going to have more longevity."
The BDA is working marketing angles, certainly. no one can really deny that. But in a game of sales and perception, that's what you need to do in order to come out on top.
In the end, it's Toshiba's own fault that they fail to capture the sales lead from the BDA. Poor marketing can be blamed for their position in the HDM sales race...that and a dearth of truly must have, exclusive content.