New blus $20 and under becoming standard?

[Batman1980]

New BD Releases Dropping Below $20 to Drive Mass Adoption
Posted November 11, 2009 04:31 AM by Juan Calonge
In the fourth quarter of the year, studios are sacrificing BD premium pricing and applying aggressive discounting for faster mass adoption of the format. Several major retailers now sell new BD releases at under $20 – barely above special-edition DVD releases, or even below. This is beyond what industry analysts expected at this stage.

To illustrate that one can look for instance at the Amazon price of the DVD and BD releases of the highest-grossing movies of the year and compare its prices on Blu-ray, special-edition DVD and single-disc DVD.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Paramount/Dreamworks): $21.99 / $20.99 / $15.99
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Warner): $16.99 / $20.99 / $9.99
Up (Disney): $19.99 / $19.99 / $14.99
The Hangover (Warner): $17.99 / $20.99 / $15.99
Star Trek (Paramount): $21.49 / $22.99 / $9.99
In three of the top five biggest movies of the year, the BD was actually cheaper than the two-disc special edition DVD of the same title. One had the exact price, and one was one dollar more expensive.

Wal-Mart has also started offering new BDs of theatrical films at $19.96 their first week on shelves.

“There's a lot of aggressive discounting going on,” said Tom Adams, president of Adams Media Research. “We expect to see more of that.”

“There's something about that $20 market in business that doesn't change, despite 3% inflation in the last decade,” Adams added. “DVD sales at mass market exploded after falling below that $20 barrier. That seems to be the magic price point.”

According to a Home Media Magazine survey of pricing at Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and Amazon, the average shelf price of a new Blu-ray Disc of a theatrical film has dropped nearly $2 from the first half of 2009 to the second. And from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, the price has dropped nearly $3, based on pre-release pricing from the stores' Web sites.

“Premium prices were going to shrink,” Adams said. “But we didn't expect to see prices under $20 this year.”

Adams projects 9 million Blu-ray ready homes at the end of this year, up from 3 million at the end of last year. He said the format still has less than 10% market penetration, after discounting those PS3 gamers uninterested in buying movies.

Once the number of homes hits the 25 million to 50 million range, Adams said, studios should be able to safely phase out DVD completely.

“[Blu-ray is] going to be adopted, in our view,” Adams said. “It's the next player you buy. It will be under $100 for the holidays this year, and under $100 permanently starting next year. The adoption curve is healthy. It gives the studio a lot of options.”

Source: Home Media Magazine | Permalink | Relevant for:
I'm sure all the big collectors here like me noticed this, actually now expect blus to start coming out on release day at $15 and below next year to really force people to consider switching.