Warners lowers Blu Ray Pricing in 4th Q 2008 (1 Viewer)

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I am not sure about this yet thought it was worth mentioning


There is a lot more info

I'd rather see them keep the prices constant and up the bit rates.

I'm ALL for this.

It's good, but Warner was never really that bad on price. Fox needs to do this.

Exactly. Of the major studios, Warner is the one LEAST in need of price decreases.

Not that i'm complaining, mind you!

And include lossless audio.

What's the concern here? That the studios won't actually be turning a profit on the product?

Mike,
That's how I read it, Warner again is trying to take the lead and move this format forward with more reasonable pricing that hopefully will get the other studios to adopt too. Warner has previously stated that they need to increase profitability and probably figures one way to do that is to increase sales in this troubled economy by jumpstarting this format into a mainstream market product.

As to your question. Perhaps they're talking about oversaturating the market with lower pricing has caused the SD DVD market to be stagnate in growth. I think they're wrong there because people are still buying software, but to expect them to do so at that same rate for several years might be unrealistic especially with so many options for the consumers entertainment dollars.





Crawdaddy

Yes, sounds about right. Good news.

As others have said, it takes one to start the ball rolling. As long as the quality of transfers doesn't also decline, this is a good thing.

This pricing thing sounds good, but Warner needs to focus on including lossless audio and less DNR on all of their titles. Their minimalist approach to audio and video is frustrating especially since they own so many good titles.

Yeah, we heard you, but this thread is about BRD pricing.





Crawdaddy

I cannot imagine how lowering the price on SD material has caused the DVD market to stagnate. But, then again, I'm no marketing or economics expert--which is why I ask the question.

But, if that's what they believe, it seems like it would definitely benefit them to make the BD market as attractive as possible. It gets suckers like us to upgrade and will really appeal to all those non-hobbyists who want to take advantage of those new HD sets in their living rooms.

Yep, and retail outlets as well. Media preparation & manufacturing is only a small fraction (at most 1/20) of the cost of your Blu-Ray. The rest goes to studio, distributor, & retailer profit, promotions, transportation costs, & down a variety of rabbit holes. With DVDs becoming a "commodity" product, margins have fallen a long way. In a market of the existing very large size, there's still enough for profit to make new releases attractive, & enough money for marketing & so on (although there are a lot of small-time releases which don't get much publicity), even though a lot of the costs (manufacturing, packaging & transportation to an extent, &c.) are basically fixed.

Now, take a market which is at most a few percent of the DVD market, and try to impose the DVD pricing structure on it. There just isn't enough money in the pool to support serving that market. The demand for BD has to grow to some considerable extent before prices can fall, which is in a microcosm why introducing any new product is always a chicken-and-egg question. In the case of DVD the drop came somewhat early because a substantial part of the cost was soaked up by, e.g., losses at Internet retailers trying to undersell the market, which means your DVDs were paid for by their shareholders or venture capitalists. Unless you can sucker somebody into doing that again, the BD market is either going to have slow price drops & slow expansion, or go the way of HDDVD and collapse.

Hopefully they'll lower prices worldwide and not just in the US Domestic market.

My sheer speculation and guess is, when you drop the prices too low/too soon, people buy up all the titles they want (sooner than otherwise) at a lower price. If you keep the price up somewhat higher, consumers will still buy the titles they want but at a slower pace. Hence, the studios make more money with the higher prices even though it's over a longer period of time.

Very smart move in my opinion. $30 a film is killing the format, especially in this economy.

The entertainment companies need to sacrifice some profit in the short run in exchange for more volume, more excitement and more market penetration. The long run profits would be tremendous if most people bought in.

Remember, time is a factor. Companies have to consider cash flow, not just overall profit. It's better to make $2 today and $2 tomorrow than to make $5 tomorrow if you need to meet payroll today.

Lee is right, though -- DVD has changed the nature of consumer video collecting. DVDs *are* a commodity. The faster that studios can get BDs to a commodity pricing level, the sooner those long-term mass-market profits will start rolling in.

I think that, currently, companies are trying to make the $5 today, at the expense of building that mass market for the long term.

Fully agreed. At some place like Best Buy. I see $34.95 and $39.95.

So does anyone think this plan became a victim of the economy?