It seems that recently the pricing of Blu-ray Discs have come under scrutiny.

James over at Format War Central posted this piece asking where all the Buy One Get One Free sales have gone. A fair question perhaps though to me it seems obvious that these sales were largely a tool to maintain or gain market share for specific ‘important’ events or dates, and a way to maintain a higher market share overall in the format war. While HD DVD focused on the pricing of the hardware, Blu-ray followed the strategy of using the media pricing to maintain market share.

Now that the format war is over, the studios need to work on what the price point of this next generation media should be. Video Business published this article about the price point of Blu-ray Discs.

The pricing of the Blu-ray media now walks the fine line where the discs sales will grow while profits can be maintained. Catalogue titles often cost twice as much as the DVDs, combined with the fact that many people already own the DVD and need to decide if it is worth paying that much for a Blu-ray ‘upgrade’.

While DVD retail pricing is pretty consistent, pricing can be all over the place, with Sony pricing their special editions well over $40 and Fox pricing their catalogue releases the same as their new releases. The only thing that is clear, now that HD DVD is not a threat, is that the studios are not interested in a ‘race to the bottom’ with respect to pricing.

That said, earlier this year Lionsgate permanently reduced the price of a selection of launch titles, including Terminator 2, Stargate and Stir of Echoes, to $20. These titles can be found at Amazon for as little as $13 currently. Fox also made the move to reduce the retail pricing of some of their catalogue titles to $29.99, however this simply brings these titles in line with the typical catalog retail prices of the other studios as opposed to getting the pricing closer to DVD.

Studios have offered a few new release titles that have closed that Blu-ray and standard-def gap. Warner Home Video tagged I Am Legend at $35.99, just $1 more than the special edition DVD, and Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment’s Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds 3D Concert, is $34.99 on standard DVD and $35.99 on Blu-ray. Lionsgate’s third season of Weeds is $39.98 standard, $39.97 Blu-ray; and its first season of Mad Men is $49.98 standard, $49.99 Blu-ray.

Other retailers hope Blu-ray pricing maintains its premium over standard DVD, in order to get additional profit out of the high-def format. Some retailers, including DeepDiscount.com, wish studios would throw out more short-term promotions, such as buy one, get one free deals, to drive customers into stores. “I am in favor of temporary deals, because that’s more of a call to action than if you just drop the price permanently”, said David T. Barker, VP of e-commerce marketing at DeepDiscount parent Infinity Resources.

Going forward on Blu-ray, Barker hopes studios and retailers can balance their own revenue needs with dangling the right carrot for customer purchasing. “You want to get more people involved, especially on the Blu-ray catalog side, where some of the stuff is a challenge,” he said. “You have to be really creative to get people to buy again on Blu-ray. They’ve already converted these titles from VHS to DVD. But I think we have to be careful not to race to the bottom very quickly.”

Personally I am a bit of a Scrooge when it comes to Blu-ray disc pricing. For the most part I have bought catalog titles during Buy One Get One sales and on discounts, and the new release titles are so expensive that I typically only buy titles that I really want or are on sale. Even though I stopped buying DVDs back when Blu-ray back around 2004, I have not been in any real hurry to buy the Blu-ray discs, though largely as a result of the sales I have quite a number of Blu-ray titles.

Now in 2008, with less sales, my buying habits have significantly changed. Perhaps with the resolution of the format war has allowed a number of people to enter the market and this has helped keep the sales moving. It is also clear that for a number of new releases, people with players and PS3s are buying the Blu-ray discs in preference to the DVD. We also occasionally see sales on Amazon - these days typically discounts rather than Buy One Get One sales (Blu-ray Stats tracks additionally discounted titles titles at Amazon on this page) - that can help move stock.

Still we do miss the Buy One Get One sales - those of us who enjoyed them want more and those who missed out feel cheated. Perhaps we will see them again when for whatever reason the studios need to move more product.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 11:59 am and is filed under Amazon Bargains, Commentary, Market Share, Retailers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.