Paramount HD DVD payoff mentioned in Viacom financials

[BluOgre]

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

You are dreaming if you actually think that the sales of Paramount Blu-Ray discs during the time frame of their HD-DVD exclusivity would have earned them $29 million or more. It was then, and is still now, a niche product. I do hope it goes more mainstream in time, but in the short run Paramount made much more money than they otherwise would have, and in the long run they are releasing on Blu-Ray again anyway so it really won't have a long-term negative effect.

Did you actually read the first post? Viacom and Paramount were expecting LOSSES (compared to the previous year) prior to the HD-DVD agreement. That means that if they had never gone HD-DVD exclusive and stuck with their existing business model of releasing movies on both Hi-Def formats, they still would have been projecting coming up with less profit than the year before. The HD-DVD deal is what prevented that from happening.

Firstly it was a terrible decision both from a business and PR standpoint.

Business wise, let's look at the new releases alone they have missed out on for Blu-ray:

Blades Of Glory - 75k
Next - 50k
Transformers - 400k
Mighty Heart - 10k
Hearbreak Kid - 25k
Stardust - 25k
Strange Wilderness - 25k
There Will Be Blood - 50k
Cloverfield - 100k

I put in the last two because there is no way they are EVER going to sale what they could have if they released them day/date with DVD. Now they are old titles and sales will be minimal. So these are just small projections of what these titles could have sold from Aug of last year to now. The cost to distriubutors for these titles is about 24 dollars. That's nearly 20 million in lost revenue. And then we are not even talking about catlaog and other small new releases yet. You say niche.....that's true but we are talking about a premium price for this "niche" product.

My guess is after everything they would have made just as much money (if all they got was $29 million) if they would have stayed with Blu-ray and they wouldn't have had this PR nightmare. Look at them now....struggling just to get their new releases out on time because they are so far behind on the priority list with manufactures. As someone else stated, I'm sure there is other costs they could have avoided if they wouldn't have sold their soul to the devil.

Dreamworks is a whole nother deal however, they only released Shrek 3 and Bee Movie.....which probably would have not even been big sellers for Blu-ray. They made a smart choice, paramount however was short sighted. I really do think in some way they thought HD-DVD was going to last longer than it did. Because if they knew it was going to bomb so early this year I think they would have decided to not accept the bribe.