The new issue of Home Media Magazine is out, complete with the Nielsen VideoScan numbers for the week ending 1/27. This time around Blu-ray took 82% of the high-def media sales to HD DVD’s 18%. Four weeks into the year that puts Blu-ray at 77% year-to-date, and at 64% since the inception of both formats. For the third week in a row, HD DVD failed to land any titles in the Top 10 High-Def Sellers list, giving Blu-ray a clean sweep.
There is also an interesting article on the format war outside of the US. High-def player adoption outside of the US has been much slower, due to higher player pricing and a later introduction of both formats. It also shows the importance of the PS3 to the format war. For the top five European countries, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, high-def player shipments for 2007 are estimated to be 160,000, with 668,000 projected for 2008. By comparison, 2.36 million PS3s shipped in 2007, with 5.37 million expected in 2008. The PS3 certainly plays a large role in Blu-rays market dominance in European high-def media sales, even more so than in the US. In 2007 Blu-ray took a 3:1 sales lead over HD DVD for media sales in Europe. But that doesn’t match the 5:1 advantage in Australia, let alone the 9:1 advantage in Japan, which makes the 2:1 advantage in the US look not so bad for HD DVD by way of comparison.
