If you’re hoping Blu-ray will get cheaper, sooner—thanks to weak sales and that whole economy thing—hug your DVDs tight. Blu-ray Disc Association Chairman Andy Parsons says prices won’t be deflating for a while. And it’s precisely because you’re not buying enough Blu-ray! “There’s not enough market [volume]to lower the price.”
No, there has to be Michael Bay-sized “awareness and demand for the technology” before it can get more affordable. So buy more Blu-ray, dammit. And then you can afford more Blu-ray, see? Still, this pace is kind of a problem if the format’s going to be dead in five years like Samsung says, no? We’re not the kind of assholes to say we told—okay, yeah we totally are. [TG Daily via CW]
stolennomenclature
October 12, 2008 at 9:45 AM
Why can’t the Blu-Ray manufacturers lower the prices regardless of the market demand even if it means selling at a loss? If it will kickstart the market from which they will eventually benefit big-time then why not? They have already invested millions in the plant and equipment, etc. These huge corporations have more than enough money to withstand a short term loss, and presumably they have no doubt that the product will eventually be successful. The sooner sales volumes ramp up the better it will be for them. Toshiba just took a billion dollar plus hit when HD-DVD failed and have survived. Perhaps if they had invested even half of that billion dollars in dropping the price of HD-DVD players to half that of Blu-Ray at the beginning, maybe it would be Blu-Ray that failed and not HD-DVD.
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