I read over at Video Business that according to retailers, Warner Home Video is launching aggressive pricing promotions for the fourth quarter, including its most comprehensive Blu-ray Disc promotion yet.

Starting early September and running through Q1 2009, Warner will offer a Blu-ray point-of-sale rebate program with which will effectively reduce prices of participating catalog titles by several dollars. Title include The Fugitive, Enter the Dragon, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, The Aviator, The Road Warrior and Swordfish.

Warner will also offer rebates, although less extensive, for newer Blu-ray releases, including 300, The Departed, I Am Legend, Ocean’s Thirteen and We Are Marshall during the same period. The consumer price for these titles is likely to fall somewhere between $17 and $20.

While retailers hope Warner’s Blu-ray strategy will pay off with boosted sales, some store sources worry that the format is becoming devalued too quickly.

On the other hand, Newbury Comics buyer Ian Leshin seemed to embrace the studio’s strategy. The New England chain found success with Lionsgate’s Blu-ray repricings earlier this year. “Terminator 2 is our biggest-selling catalog title with the $19.99 SRP,” said Leshin. “It can become more of an impulse thing to buy.”

Personally I can see both sides here - really a lot of the old Warner catalog has reached saturation and faces bigger competition with titles that feature lossless audio, BD50 discs, etc. While I think that the studios do want to keep Blu-ray Disc at a premium price level for as long as they can, with increasing choice, some of the ‘tired old’ BD25 titles will likely benefit from price incentives.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Retailers, Studios. 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.