Yikes! 300 sells 250K copies since 7/31

[PS3NoOb]

Nice! I just ordered mine yesterday @ Amazon. I'm glad next-gen. is already getting very popular.

[Terjyn]

Anecdotally, I've seen several stores sold out of 300 on Blu-Ray.

I have yet to see a place which offers HD-DVDs sold out.

Now there could be a number of explanations for this, so it is not necessarily saying anything.

I do know that every single PS3 owner I know bought 300, and that includes a few people who had never purchased a Blu-Ray disc prior. The HD-DVD camp is correct in claiming that not everyone who purchases PS3s will buy Blu-Rays, but a movie like 300 actually transcends that claim a little...and that is very very bad news for HD-DVD.

[jorg]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Let's assume Warner is right.

Who is being more stupid:

(1) Fox, MGM, Disney, Lionsgate and Sony for missing out on 30/70 (42%) more sales.

(2) Universal for missing out on 70/30 (133%) more sales?

It's funny how the HD DVD camp all agree Warner is right, but would never agree that Universal should make the first move because they have the most to gain.

Sacrifice the 133% gain and push the others to go neutral. That's the way of maximizing their profits.

Gary

know those are numbers i like to see n disputiable i think i will use next time some one says every one go format netrual lmao

[AustinSTI]

Originally Posted by Terjyn

Anecdotally, I've seen several stores sold out of 300 on Blu-Ray.

I have yet to see a place which offers HD-DVDs sold out.

Now there could be a number of explanations for this, so it is not necessarily saying anything.

I do know that every single PS3 owner I know bought 300, and that includes a few people who had never purchased a Blu-Ray disc prior. The HD-DVD camp is correct in claiming that not everyone who purchases PS3s will buy Blu-Rays, but a movie like 300 actually transcends that claim a little...and that is very very bad news for HD-DVD.

Careful...I've read posts that have said the HD-DVD is sold out at store XYZ Anecdotally. We really don't know what kind of stock each store has gotten.

My guess is this is gonna be 2.5 or 3:1 ratio in favor of blu. There's people who'll spend $5 less for the movie who could care less about extras. For me its about PQ/AQ and if I were neutral BD woulda got the nod anyway.

As more people become aware of what they have in the PS3, try it and see the benefit that'll mean more sales for BD. It'll result in a snowball effect which will lead to more sales. Personally I had the stigma that the PS3 wasn't a great BD player when it came out. Of course now I know different but I bet people bought it not even realizing what its capable of BD wise. This movie may open them up to testing that out, and thus buying more movies once they see how capable it is...

[Disturbed350z]

Well I can't vouch for other best buys cause I didn't check their numbers
but the one that I worked in got about 20-30 more in blu-ray than hd-dvd in the initial shipment...those sold by the end of its release day while we still had plenty of hd-dvd....we got another shipment of about 70 blu-ray with only 5 on order for hd-dvd....by this past saturday we finally sold out of hd-dvd with only about 5 left on blu-ray.
This title was huge....I admit I bought it on blu-ray aswell....but I don't think I saw a person in there that didn't have it in there hand in atleast dvd form....my department (Media) hit near 300% of its budget due soley to the movie....this I thought was kind of ironic...lol

[MovieTime]

Originally Posted by Terjyn

I have yet to see a place which offers HD-DVDs sold out.

In my search for 300 on BD I noticed the HD DVD 300 version was also sold out. I did finally get 300 on BD at Target.

[Shadowself]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Let's assume Warner is right.

Who is being more stupid:

(1) Fox, MGM, Disney, Lionsgate and Sony for missing out on 30/70 (42%) more sales.

(2) Universal for missing out on 70/30 (133%) more sales?

It's funny how the HD DVD camp all agree Warner is right, but would never agree that Universal should make the first move because they have the most to gain.

Sacrifice the 133% gain and push the others to go neutral. That's the way of maximizing their profits.

Gary

While 30 is indeed only approximately 42% of 70, 70 is actually 233% of 30. Thus if Universal were to go neutral then they could pick up that 70 and increase sales by 233% over their current 30.

(Even in a 60/40 world the increase is 150%.)

Certainly there is additional cost in going dual format, but it must be more than offset by the increase in revenue and profits.

What logical reason (other than someone paying them not to) can Universal have for not going neutral?

[atomik kinder]

That is increadible. I knew this was selling well since most of the stores I visited the first day were sold out or nearly sold out. I know people are buying these things, but I find it funny that I have never seen anyone else buy a BD or HD DVD. I have never seen anyone else looking at the displays of movies. Usually when I am browsing, someone will walk by, but not even look at them.

[Rheologuy]

Originally Posted by darinp2

...After seeing how Batman Begins has sold even with earlier adopters and at $19.99 lots of places, I think there are a lot more renters out there than many realized... --Darin

That's an interesting point that I don't recall if anyone else has mentioned-- the impact on BD sales of what is probably a large rental market. Certainly a big motivation for renting (which I very rarely did with DVD's) is the high cost of BD's. Add to that the much bigger title selection at Netflix than any local sales outlet. I joined Netflix in March and have rented 20 titles since then, some of which I subsequently bought. I own 16 titles, but expect to add to that significantly in late summer and fall, with some long-awaited titles starting to come out. If there were more of the classics coming out, I'd own a lot more BD's.

Wonder if the studios realize the aformentioned factors affecting their sales?

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by Shadowself

While 30 is indeed only approximately 42% of 70, 70 is actually 233% of 30. Thus if Universal were to go neutral then they could pick up that 70 and increase sales by 233% over their current 30.

Ah, percentage fun. Especially when mixed with English:

70 is 233% of 30, but is 133% more than 30.

So, you could say "Universal could have 233% of current sales" or "Universal could see an increase of 133% in sales" and mean the exact same thing.

Gary

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by Rob Zuber

They currently have 2494 BDs and 1573 HD-DVDs of the movie.

Shows 2997 BDs now and 1629 HD DVDs.

Did people cancel orders? Did Amazon get new stock? Or does Amazon poison the data to insure nobody can really track their sales properly?

[MrVorhees]

AMAZING!!

I wonder how many copys each format sold.
This is going to be VERY interessting.

[Iceman_II]

Originally Posted by JadedRaverLA

...Unfortunately, the Blu-ray version is the one that was getting sold out everywhere (including Amazon at a couple of times), costing the Blu-ray version sales...

I would disagree, I don't think it COST any sales, it only deferred sales. I think it an incredably small probability that someone would say "hmmm the BD is sold out, so I will buy the HD-DVD" and only slightly more probable that a person looking for the BD would buy the DVD instead. I am almost positive that the vast majority of people who found it sold out at one outlet, either sought it at another outlet, or deferred the purchase until they could get one at their outlet of choice.

Just my $.02

[Iceman_II]

Originally Posted by dialog_gvf

Shows 2997 BDs now and 1629 HD DVDs.

Did people cancel orders? Did Amazon get new stock? Or does Amazon poison the data to insure nobody can really track their sales properly?

These numbers are meaningless unless you know how many they ordered to begin with.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by Iceman_II

I am almost positive that the vast majority of people who found it sold out at one outlet, either sought it at another outlet, or deferred the purchase until they could get one at their outlet of choice.

And, unless people have some reason to believe they ordered more HD DVD everywhere than Blu-ray, then selling out the Blu-ray is selling more.

And anecdotally, stores were ordering at least 2x the number of Blu-ray. Probably merely matching their sales rates of the two formats. And since they were so surprised by the result, that could indicate that sales exceeded the normal sales comparison.

[surfdude12]

ok so on opening day (July 31), I went to Circuit City at around 8pm, and the guy working there said they only ordered TEN copies of BD and HD DVD of 300. He indiicated that the ten BD's sold out at 11am'ish, while there was still 2-3 HD DVD's left at 8pm

[The Big Blue]

Amazing numbers. 300 could be the title we look back to in the future and thank for changing some minds and helping secure BDs future.

[doctorsteve]

Let's for a moment assume that every HDDuD player owner bought 300, and the rest of the copies were bought by Blu-Rayers. What would that worst case scenario look like???

[Terjyn]

Originally Posted by AustinSTI

Careful...I've read posts that have said the HD-DVD is sold out at store XYZ Anecdotally. We really don't know what kind of stock each store has gotten.

Right, this is exactly why I said that what I saw has no official bearing on what really happened.

[nhaase]

Originally Posted by doctorsteve

Let's for a moment assume that every HDDuD player owner bought 300, and the rest of the copies were bought by Blu-Rayers. What would that worst case scenario look like???

Well, including the 360 add-on there are something like 300,000 HD DVD players, so your assumption is impossible. I'm not going into including only standalones into that assumption, since we've all dealt w/ the crappy end of that debate (PS3). We won't know anything for sure until format-specific numbers are released, but if this title follows the trend of all other titles, we will all be very happy, as will the BDA. Ken Graffeo will probably be very happy, too, since he will have a good excuse to charge more LSD to Universal's account to help him hallucinate while thinking of ways to spin it.