Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player Price Drop?
- Scribbled on March 22nd, 2007 by Devin Grimes
- Filed in Hardware Peripherals, Microsoft Xbox 360, Rumor Mill
With the current format war battle still brewing, supporters of both Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD are constantly going back and forth with who is actually winning in sales.
Pre-PS3, HD-DVD was dominating the next-gen market for movies, but since then, with a few million Blu-Ray players out there inside the PS3, BR looks to be taking the lead.
And this seems to have had a dramatic effect on the price of the Xbox360’s MSRP $200 USD HD-DVD player add-on. Gamers are reporting that the peripheral has been spotted several times at Wal-Mart, retailing for $130. Not only that, but they are clearing out their entire line of HD-DVD players.
Is this Blu-Ray declaring it’s victory in the format war? It seems so. Since November, BD sales have jumped to nearly three times that of HD-DVD. What are your thoughts, is HD-DVD the next Betamax?
(Via Kotaku)
March 22nd, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Well, thus far the “back and forth” action seems to be highly dependent on the launch movies of that month.
If HD-DVD received a few hot titles, would that change the sales figures for that month? Probably - but where are those “hot titles” anyway?
Microsoft hasn’t declared a price drop though, right? Until they do, perhaps companies are just trying to move the hardware as quickly as possible?
In either case, this isn’t the same war as VHS vs. BetaMax. The DVD is a very easy and worthwhile piece of equipment, this new high def stuff is just icing on the cake.
And that high-def cake is a small part of the overall market. I think they’ll both have to fight to stay alive - not just one.