Price wars?

I've been planning on picking up Star Wars: Clone Wars Season 1 on BD next week and checked Amazon to see if that would be the cheapest way to go. A while back, Amazon had it for preorder at $41.99. Now, it's $34.99.

What's even better? Best Buy.com also has it for 34.99. Wal-Mart.com has it for 32 and change.

Amazon also has a number of upcoming BD releases, like Harry Potter and Terminator, for 18 bucks.

Are we seeing a drop in overall prices or retailers getting cutthroat because they're worried about consumer confidence and the economy as the holidays approach? I'd like to think that prices are coming down, but that's probably just wishful thinking.

Thoughts?

That's alot better than their ad- according to that, it's $47.99 (!) in store. I just laughed when I saw that price and ordered my copy from Amazon.

Blu-ray players will sell plenty this holiday season with the economy slowly improving.  The retailers know that and to get people to frequent their stores, cost effective software is a carrot they can use to move more units of players, software and other hardware items.

If blu-ray is going to get more market penetration then software pricing needs to be closer to SD DVD.

I'm guessing it's a fair bit of both.

The reality is that the economy and this particular market doesn't just stay static from year to year, era to era.  Things change for a variety of reasons, and right now, there's certainly plenty of change going on due to the historic economic downturn whether anyone (eg. big corporate, retailers, consumers, etc) likes it or not.

Retailers must be proactive to stay on top of the market (and overall situation) and not become the next Circuit City or similar.  Even during the dot.com boom in the early days of DVD (before that boom crashed and burned to leave a small number of big, thriving survivors), there were plenty of action going on for different reasons -- and many of us benefited greatly from the super-heightened competition and price slashing from back then, which actually had a long lasting impact on DVD pricing in general (as some/many studios surmised) and may continue to impact the BD market going forward (due to years of trained consumer expectations).

The marketplace is a very organic system w/ lots of variables.  So honestly, there's really no one thing driving it all although the recent/current historic economic context is a big, primary one, which is itself really a huge collection of variables.  If you want to boil it all down though, I guess maybe *fear* is the primary ingredient driving a whole lot of what's been going on so far -- there were some bits of possibly excessive optimism about the economic recovery (in certain quarters of the country), but that's probably also waning some now (as can be seen in Wall St the last few days).  Also, don't forget that the economy is becoming more and more global all the time.

So in essence, I think the retailers are reacting while also preparing for the holiday shopping season -- in one sense, it's nothing new, except for the context itself.  And I also suspect what's going on now will have some sort of long lasting impact and/or is part of a developing trend in pricing (and consumer shopping expectations and habits) since the current economic context is really far from over and will continue to push retailers to react (in one way or another).  Maybe we'll end up w/ some sort of more exaggerated annual market cycle where there's a big lull in discounting in Q1 (to regain some margins) after all the Q4 holiday shopping price wars.

_Man_

Edited by Man-Fai Wong - 10/31/09 at 5:31pm

As was inevitable, retailers are devoting more and more of their precious floor space to Blu-ray and taking it away from DVD.  As the hobby continues to move toward HD, retailers are going to have to do what they can to help make it a mainstream product.

And what Robert says is the absolute truth.  I don't know how many times I've heard HTFers say they won't pay the higher prices for Blu-ray software.  I've been one of them.

All I know is when I can get a Pixar 4 disk box set for under $18.50 SOMETHING has to be working right, finally.  BRING IT ON.

+1 Mike and Robert.  I also have not made the plunge to Blu yet due to prices.  With player prices still high and new release and catalogue prices at 30 and 20 we just can't jump.  We have been forced to cut back after taking a pay cut and with food prices, gas prices, heat and cost of shoes , boots, clothes, etc. going up for the three kids.  We would love to go blu, but the benefit over upconvert DVD just insn't enough right now in this economic climate and at those prices for us to do it.  I'll keep drooling though if it's ok with everyone.  Very few people in my close friends and family circle have made the jump either.  Most are also feeling the pinch and see it as a luxury they can't afford.  About half those don't have HD TV yet either.

Few of my circle have made the jump to blu, either, David.  But with players dropping in price (I saw that Magnavox model for $148 tonight at Wal-Mart and Target is running a special on a Philips model with a Disney disc this week for $159) I expect that to change for some of them soon. 

And I'm really surprised to hear you say "half" don't have an HD TV yet.  That's basically a matter of attrition now and I've got to believe numbers across the country are climbing fast.  I think that is another fact that is now helping facilitate the "mainstreaming" of Blu-ray. 

Your right Mike and Black Friday may change the situation for me.  I guess I still have the bitter taste of losing the HD-DVD battle and (having 4 players and about a hundred titles) I have been a bit gun shy for blu.  HDTV is making a lot of inroads, but I don't think blu is following quite as quickly.  Prices will still have to come down a bit on titles for it to really catch up.  I remember the days of laserdisc where new releases were $35 and people thought I was crazy for buying them (I probably was - they're all collecting dust now).  DVD was succesful mostly because of the convenience offered (over VHS & laserdisc) and price point of software being reasonable.
Edited by David_Jr - 11/8/09 at 3:03am

This is going to be a big holiday for Blu if the media reports are anywhere close.  $299 PS3s sure help!

I don't know about Blu, but there are some crazy prices on upcoming SD releases at Amazon, these are $9.99 each:

Night at the Museum 2
Star Trek
Julie & Julia

and probably more. Those are just the titles on the current bestsellers list.