2 facts I got from the New York Times:
- According to data from Adams Media Research, 578,000 HD DVD and 370,000 Blu-ray machines will be sold by the end of this year.
- As an indication of their owners’ enthusiasm, Blu-ray users are buying twice as many discs as their HD DVD counterparts, according to Tom Adams, president of Adams Media Research.
And since the InTrade contract is about sales of discs in the US (not of machines), “based on sales figures complied by Nielsen VideosScan” (reported by the media, and gathered by Koleman Strumpf), I understand that the expiry will favor the “yes” side of the bet. The settlement will probably be done next week, I’m told —the 2007 contract is “paused”, right now.
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Will Blu-Ray format discs outnumber sales of HD-DVD format discs in the United States in 2008?
It is said in the NYT that the battle is still from over. Few people feel that they really need HD movies or games, as of today.
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UPDATE: Koleman Strumpf comments…
The NYT article was interesting for focusing largely on hardware rather than software sales. This is unfortunate since most of the players which have been sold are part of game consoles (Xbox 360′s and PlayStation 3′s) which are rarely used for viewing movies. Far more important is the software side, with more studios still supporting Blu-Ray than HD-DVD. A telling fact: Transformers was released in HD-DVD but not Blu-Ray, but in the week it hit the streets Blu-Ray still sold more discs.
The NYT article was interesting for focusing largely on hardware rather than software sales. This is unfortunate since most of the players which have been sold are part of game consoles (Xbox 360′s and PlayStation 3′s) which are rarely used for viewing movies. Far more important is the software side, with more studios still supporting Blu-Ray than HD-DVD. A telling fact: Transformers was released in HD-DVD but not Blu-Ray, but in the week it hit the streets Blu-Ray still sold more discs.