According to the study, 695,000 consumers own either a Blu-ray or HD DVD player in the U.S. Roughly 425,000 of those next-gen players sold were Blu-ray, or 61 percent of the overall market. Its competition, HD DVD, has sold roughly 270,000 units, or 39 percent.
Based on this data, it would seem that Blu-ray has jumped out to an early lead, but the story inside the numbers paint a different picture.
Only 25,000 of the 425,000 Blu-ray players sold were purchased as standalone units. The other 400,000 come from PS3 sales. With HD DVD, 120,000 units were purchased as separate devices, and the other 150,000 come from Xbox 360 upgrade kits.
Based on these numbers, only 21 percent of new players were bought as standalone devices. HD DVD sales account for 83 percent of standalone purchases, while Blu-ray sales clock in at 17 percent.
Since 79 percent of all next-gen DVD sales come as the result of purchasing a gaming console, will sales of the PS3 and Xbox 360 determine the winner of the format war?
“Game machines are typically adopted at much faster rates than consumer electronics products — tens of millions of homes in three to four years versus millions,” Adams Media President Tom Adams told ARS Technica. “Yes, there is some hesitation [to buy standalone units] because of the format war, but the target market of early adopters typically buys most new technologies soon upon availability, even if there’s the chance they’ll be obsolete eventually.”
