Are BD releases too cheap...? Disney CEO Robert Iger thinks so! (1 Viewer)

In a conference call with analyst it looks as if Robert Iger noted that he would like to take a page from Fox's pricing structure. Too bad... this would likely cause me to buy less Disney releases this year.

Note: emphasis mine

Link

If those included DVDs are that pricey, please, by all means, don't include them so that prices can stay reasonable. :rolleyes

Well, he can go ahead and try. I already skip Disney BD releases because of the high prices. Disney doesn't get a DVD sale from me because I'd like to get the BD and they don't get a BD sale because the prices are too high....go figure. Iger'll just make it that much easier to continue skipping Disney titles if he decides prices will go up.

If this happens (and I doubt it will), I bet they do it one time and see the drop in sales and go back to the current prices.

That is definitely my hope. Well that and I hope they do it on a title I don't want.

hey Disney want to make money?
open your vault and make your catalog regularly available

0 supply = 0 sales



raising your prices in this economy/climate isn't going to help your cause

So, does anyone want to go back and redo their worst/best studio votes?

This has me more concerned than a price increase.

If studios cut back on catalog titles (which are few are far enough between to begin with) then they can raise the prices to $50 a title and it won't effect me much because there won't be hardly anything for me to buy.

Not a good idea.

I could understand a premium if Disney presented something a bit classier, but their BDs are already like adware for their other products. Ratatouille must have about a dozen previews and commercials that I just kept having to skip and forward through. Probably 15 to 20 minutes or more of crap before you even get to a menu.

haha yeah, go and raise prices in a recession and think that consumers, already cutting back, will not cut back even more. Logical.

It is like the human species is making its best effort to get dumber as time goes on. Mind boggling...

So that vote was for how the studios will do in 2009? Let me grab my crystal ball.

The audience for these remarks was a bunch of financial analysts, so I would not put too much stock in what was said. No one in their right mind expects that raising prices will be a winning strategy in the current economic climate.

Putting that aside, Disney really does need to figure out how to get the average SD DVD consumer with a family to buy in to BluRay.

Having a digital copy or SD DVD in the same box is part of that strategy. I don't disagree with those here that resent having to pay for something they neither want or need, but the target audience for most Disney fare is not the folks that hang out here, but the family with kids that has several SD DVD players around the house, in the car, etc. For them, a Bluray disc that can only be played in the family room is a non-starter.

Brian

Disney makes great BluRays; but I would have to conclude that Iger is a stupid, stupid man. A couple of points I'd like to bring up:

1.) DISNEY was one of the main studios backing up BluRay from the start. A lot of market analysts agreed, a couple of years ago, that if Disney wanted to use only BluRay that the format had a better chance of success. They were right. However...WHERE are all the catalog titles on BR???

2.) Disney has missed out on several major releases that came out only on standard. They should have doubled up on Peter Pan and Mary Poppins--two of their most successful catalog titles, ever. Why did Disney miss out this opportunity??

3.) High prices on catalog titles pretty much means that those movies will not sell well. It's so dumb--if 90% of collectors already have the title on standard, they may or may not be enthusiastic about a BR. Basically, movie fans are only upgrading their standard def versions when A.) the BR is a substantial upgrade on the old dvd and B.) when the price is very low, or the title can be found on sale.

4.) Robert Iger is clearly an old school economist that things that the streets of the U.S. are still paved with gold. Times have changed in America--overnight. If BR is going to be the success they want it to be, they need to make 'em cheaper. And put out more titles so that we actually have something to BUY. I'm not buying Mary Poppins on BR...because it doesn't EXIST on BR. So stupid...

More people will get into BluRay if they equalize it. Let's take note of the practice by Warner and Paramount by matching the prices or even making them cheaper! Look on Amazon and see how it's a few dollars cheaper to buy Warner's Kubrick films on BluRay than the 2-disc DVDs.

On the other hand, after seeing the excellent Wall-E BluRay, a slightly higher price could be justified a bit. But anything but the ridiculous $28 retail prices on the bare-bones and often mediocre MGM/Fox releases.

I think Iger's just angling for a government bailout check.

We can all quit. That's gonna be the best line in this thread.

There is no argument from anyone that Disney makes great
Blu-ray product. In fact, some of the best I have seen.

However, should they raise their prices I guarantee you lost sales.

As a practice, I don't buy any BD title that costs more than $30,
and in most cases I don't go above $27.

Well, Disney's stock took a big plummet this week and this was just posted on msnbc.com:

"The media company late Tuesday reported a 32% drop in fiscal-first-quarter profit as vacationers stayed home from Disney's theme parks and DVD sales were weak."

Yeah? Ya think? Dvd sales were weak? Maybe...just maybe...it's because there were no new BluRays to buy!

Disney has some of the best BD releases on the market. That being said, and catalog titles had better have massive, GOOD extras and picture and sound quality that dwarf that of the SD release if they're going to release them with a substantial markup on BD.

Maybe what they need to do is take their upgrade rebate program (that they've been trying out on some test cases it seems) to the next step and promote it more publicly for catalog titles. If they make it easier (and common public knowledge) to get the $10 upgrade rebate, then the higher prices for catalog titles would be far more justifiable me thinks.

For new day-and-date releases of certain family-oriented titles, I certainly won't mind paying a little bit more to have the SD DVD version included. But for other titles, I'd rather not have the extra disc instead. And oh, that's not to say I don't want to see prices come down in general, but I'm talking about relatively speaking.

_Man_