Quote:
Originally Posted by gand41f
Reading between the lines, I assume what is meant here is that it is actually Toshiba and retailers working in unison to find a spot for a "soft landing" (as opposed to "crash landing"...massive returns, etc.) and they have a tacit agreement to stop the whole charade in a few months...but they can't yet since we're still in the Christmas return period?
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More or less. Retailers don't want to rush too soon into pulling the plug on HD-DVD because a lot of their customers obviously purchased the format from their stores over the holidays - they run the risk of pissing people off and getting a lot of returns. On the other hand, sales were down across the board last year and especially over the holidays. With Warner having made their move, there's a feeling at retail that this is nearly over. All you have to do is look at the mainstream press post CES to see that feeling reflected there. So going forward, you're not going to find a lot of retail sales people recommending HD-DVD to their customers without heavily qualifying it to cover themselves. So, you're not going to see a lot of mainstream consumers buying HD-DVD. Even with these sales - if low prices were enough to win this thing for HD-DVD, that would have happened already. So as these players slowly go out the door, I'm guessing they won't be restocked by many retailers. Hardware and software sales will slow dramatically, and that will be all the more justification not to stock them. It will snowball.