BDA..Sony..Anybody - Lower your prices

[Maxell]

Originally Posted by Pilam69

Reuters reports that "Operating loss at its game unit, which offers loss-making PlayStation 3 game gear, is estimated to exceed 100 billion yen ($876 million) for the current business year, compared with its original projection of 50 billion yen, a Sony spokeswoman said."

That's better than the "red rings of death" bill that Microsoft is enjoying. Plus whatever losses they take on consoles.

[Zazou]

Originally Posted by devonthedude

No need to panic at all for Sony. Plus if blu-ray wins the ps3 will win down the line.

Surely you mean 'when' it wins

Lee

[Trebar]

It will be interesting to see if these firesale units actually give any bump to HD-DVD sales. It's certainly good news for us sideliners if BDA makes a move to counter before Black Friday.

[jw]

Originally Posted by bmr76

sony or anyone could lower their cost to retailers at anytime. I remember when dud went from 399.99 to 299.99, toshiba lowered our cost, even waited for stock to be depleted, then when we re ordered they lowered our cost. I would love for sony or someone to say thats it "299.99", I think that would be a great price point.

Yea I posted something like this as sears is offering a HDDVD player on black friday for 169.99, but it looks like the bda has noticed.
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/ind...2&newsid=11449

Doesnt say what they are going to do as far as price, but they admit they have noticed.

[jw]

Originally Posted by Trebar

It will be interesting to see if these firesale units actually give any bump to HD-DVD sales. It's certainly good news for us sideliners if BDA makes a move to counter before Black Friday.

Fire sales on players will definetly increase disc sales, there is no doubt there.
Our only real selling point for blu(that the average consumer cares about, I know our specs are better, etc.) is the BDA has a better selection of films that are exclusive to blu. You have to admit, Studio support has helped drive people in the blu direction and increase player sales despite that 200.00 price difference.
The average Joe doesnt understand all that 50gb talk and the 1080p, it just confuses them.
The bottom line is why buy a player that has limited studio support? Yes you got a cheap player but I dont know about you, but I can only watch TF and Shrek one time and I am ready for the next movie.

[thrlride]

Originally Posted by quetzalcoatl

It is because the PS3 is being sold at a loss as are all gaming systems. Most CE's donot sell other things at a loss. You say this yet Sony's only Blu-ray stand alones are among the most expensive on the market. Bottom line we might think it is needed but our own insider for Sony disagrees.

This is very true, except with the Wii, I believe that has been profitable all along.

[SS316SRV]

By selling at a lose, HD DVD is making it an unwise financial desicion. Maxpower put in the Insiders Thread yesturday that the BDA is well aware about the opportunity to lower prices, but to sell at a lose is an unwise business decision. The problem with dirt cheap low prices is that the customers will expect that. If the new line of blu-ray players were selling at $350 lets say, then when they went up in price to make them profitable, then we would scream bloody murder. Blu-ray's are making profit, HD DVDs are not.

[mdm1699]

Originally Posted by BigB88

The BDA or Sony of someone needs to lower their player prices, even a little would help. I think Sony has already done their part with the 40GB PS3. Come on Samsung, Pioneer, Phillips, et al !!! Pony up.

http://bigtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com...dvd-price-war/

Helter Skelter, The British are coming, Wolf! Cripes don't you people ever get enough? ENOUGH ALREADY! Why would and sane organization invest in ANYTHING that does not generate a profit. HDM has only reached the mainstream media this year. Yet, within this same year you expect them to sell at a loss. Who do you expect to subsidize this loss and for the benefit of whom? They(CE and Studios) DON'T need HDM. The consumers do. WB goes Blu exclusive and we WILL BUY HDM. Slowly but surely!

[joeorc]

Originally Posted by BigB88

The BDA or Sony of someone needs to lower their player prices, even a little would help. I think Sony has already done their part with the 40GB PS3. Come on Samsung, Pioneer, Phillips, et al !!! Pony up.

http://bigtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com...dvd-price-war/

i think the reduced Blu-Ray players are very much on the Way Daewoo has 2 Blu-Ray player's listed on the Blu-Raydisc.com web site they should be released soon enough and the reports are well below $500.00.

as Silverberg stated already:

But now that hardware pricing is affordable for both Blu-ray and HD DVD, it appears consumers no longer want to decide.

i think the challenge for blu-ray was to get player cost under $400.00 BEFORE NEXT YEAR STARTED AND Blu-Ray CE companies just may have met that challenge for all we know.

[jw]

This will make you cry
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-A2-HD-DVD-Player/dp/B000IJV4BC/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-2853478-9631616?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1193745051&sr=8-1


Damn, and its not black Fri yet

[Trebar]

Originally Posted by jwbbud

This will make you cry
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-A2-HD-DVD-Player/dp/B000IJV4BC/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-2853478-9631616?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1193745051&sr=8-1


Damn, and its not black Fri yet

The original article referenced both Amazon and CC as well as Wal-Mart. The really big eye-popper was the A3 for $170. I mean, what is Sears thinking!?

[WickyWoo]

Sears isn't thinking anything. that's all Toshiba

Like all black friday items at ludicrous prices, all these things are in limited quantity. The price is there, the depth of stock is not

[ArkGuy]

Sears is thinking "let's get people in our electronics department early in the day." They know some will grab the bargain and move on to the next store. Others will look at big TV or major appliances (almost always on the same floor of two story Sears stores). They might buy that day or come back Saturday but it gets eyeballs on their other merchandise and distributes more of their foot traffic to before lunch.

Unless the build quality and upscaling ability is really bad, for that price you are getting an upconverting DVD player, even if HD-DVD folds week later, and in the mean time you get access to titles currently unavaiable.

The conventional wisdom around here is that the only people who will buy these are uninformed "suckers" dragging their barefooted children through Wal-Mart. Actually, I think a large number of the buyers will be people who know exactly what they are doing, what the pros and cons are, etc.

It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

[JTK]

Two easy "no brainers" I'd like to see and I think are perfectly realisitic:

1.) I'd like to see a $299 or so BD standalone player in the next couple of months for the holidays. (Heavily rumored to be happening.)

2.) I'm happy with most of the BD software pricing except Fox. They absolutely need to bring their disc prices down to the same as every other BD studio.

[dobyblue]

You should see some competitive pricing this Christmas from the Blu-ray camp, particularly for outgoing profile 1.0 players.

The new Panny DMP-BD30K will be US$499.95 MSRP and will be profile 1.1, which means it should show up on Amazon for around $399 - not bad for a player of this calibre, not bad at all.

[Dalese]

Originally Posted by jwbbud

This will make you cry
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-HD-A2-HD-DVD-Player/dp/B000IJV4BC/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-2853478-9631616?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1193745051&sr=8-1

Damn, and its not black Fri yet

It's just Amazon marking down the same discontinued bottom-tier player matching Circuit City and Wal-mart's pricing.

Remember that Toshiba was estimating there would be millions of HD-DVD players sold this year. A large portion of that I'm sure were to be the 1080i A2's. And we know that the actual sales have been far less than that. IMO Toshiba's original plan was to be far more along in sales on the A2 by the time its successor model came out. Now that the A3 is here there is "excessive" unsold inventory that needs to be cleared out.

Electronics products often have date of manufactures on their cases. Next time I get into a retail store I am going to check the "date" on the A2 box. I'm willing to bet that the production date of the "bargain" players is from earlier this year (maybe way earlier) meaning its been sitting in a warehouse or shipping container for quite a while.

[BigB88]

Originally Posted by TauRus

No, I think the pricing on Blu-Ray players is where it should be at the moment. If they start dropping the prices too early they will repeat Toshiba's most serious mistake - they will erode any incentive in manufacturing the Blu-ray players. Do not worry about the Toshiba promotion - this is a stock liquidation campaign for Toshiba. Even if they give their player at no charge this is not going to help them at all. Too little too late. Their cheap price policy has failed and Toshiba products are going the way of dodo.

I don't agree, these players are overpriced compared to what the market can sustain. In addition, overpriced players means less money in the pocket of consumers who also want to buy HDTV's, afterall, this is the real end-game. We need to have more HDTV's (preferably 1080P's) sold out there for the HDM market to take off. Overpricing players doesn't get this done. I am not advocating a sub $200 Blu-ray player, but I do think they should lower to $325 at a minumum on some units. I would have several BDA CE members lower their prices to $299 on Black Friday only to counteract any HD-DVD campaign. Doing nothing with player prices is not the answer here.

[BigB88]

Originally Posted by Pilam69

Reuters reports that "Operating loss at its game unit, which offers loss-making PlayStation 3 game gear, is estimated to exceed 100 billion yen ($876 million) for the current business year, compared with its original projection of 50 billion yen, a Sony spokeswoman said."

So what, they will make 20 times this on futurte game revenue. This is peanuts to these companies.

[BigB88]

Originally Posted by thrlride

This is very true, except with the Wii, I believe that has been profitable all along.

The WII is not in the same class of gaming unit as the Xbox or PS3, I don't know why everyone always uses it in all the comparisons, the WII is for scaled down games for kiddies and really has no power to speak of. It should not be used when comparing the power game consoles, either for price, availability, power and features.

[aristotles]

Price of the hardware is not holding back adoption. People go out and buy 2000+ dollar HDTV's all the time. Buying a player is a one time cost that people are willing to pay if they view it as having quality, reliability and value in the features it includes.

The price of the titles, however, are holding back adoption. If you want a concrete example of what happens when prices are lowered to the DVD level on titles, look no further than the recent BOGO sales and how they helped defeat Transformers on HD DVD.

Uncertainty is yet another factor keeping people on the fence. If Warner goes Blu-ray exclusive, people will adopt Blu-ray in a big way and that will naturally drive down prices of hardware as economies of scale kick in. Once that happens, Blu-ray will begin to replace DVD as the video disc standard as adoption accelerates even more.

I believe that the BDA should concentrate on getting WB exclusive to Blu-ray and encourage all of the Blu-ray studios to being lowering their MSRP closer to DVD levels.

Look at Apple as an example of a company that makes a nice profit margin on hardware. They attract people to their platform with great software at a low price and that is what the BDA needs to do with here.

Forget about trying to win marketshare by sacrificing profitability as that is the old way of business thinking. Build a great platform with affordable content and they will come.