BLU-RAY SALES THREAD: Put all sales figures and comments here! - Page 281  

Any projections for Avatar digital sales for the first full week? iTunes? Amazon?


Few things...

That 13.5M for Dark Knight was worldwide and included consumers and rentailer.. From the link it appears only 10M were sold to worldwide consumers. The Avatar 6.7M total is US/Canada (North America?) only since it came from Nielsen. You would have to add up the UK and Japan and Australia totals too to that 6.7M to compare to Dark Knight sales.

Of course regardless of getting real numbers to accurately compare, it is obvious you are just setting yourself up for future comments along the lines of "Avatar was bigger than The Dark Knight yet sold fewer copies - hence physical media is declining...". Which just might be true. But declining doesn't equal dead, and until another billion dollar solution comes along, it's the best option available.

Off topic here. Please feel free to start that discussion in the appropriate forum.


Interesting data. I wonder what the Blu-ray / DVD split will be internationally.

Kosty is good at digging up and presenting data so I am looking forward to seeing the relative performance data.

I don't think the industry looks at it this way, at least not anymore.

It is not a contest between Blu-ray and DVD. They are synergistic.

1. Blu-ray is obviously going to take over as the format of choice. New HW will be Blu-ray within a short amount of time.
2. Blu-ray will dominate new title sales going forward.
3. DVD will continue for legacy and deep catalog. Some titles will never be repressed (and don't need to be considering the content and the state of the masters). Others will eventually have Blu-ray pressings as DVD stocks run out.
4. Blu-ray and DVD should be thought of as two variants of the "same thing". They are the same size, have the same use cases and marketing issues, and all play on the new hardware.

But of course.



Avatar breaks UK Blu-ray sales record

Thus you have about 6.92M at least for the first 4 days between North America and the UK. Plus you need the other 3 days for North America, the other 6 days for the UK, and the whole week for Japan and Australia. It would only need about 3M more sales between the unknown dates/countries to match Dark Knight sales. Which seems likely.

Matching The Dark Knight should be the absolute floor of expectations. It had some $1.7 BILLION in higher box office (more than doubling up The Dark Knight).

Due to the price of 3D tickets largely. Compare the actual amount of tickets sold for Dark Knight and Avatar and I bet there is a different story (e.g. they are more close in actual tickets sold than the $$ made from those tickets - due to the 3D premium on a large amount of Avatar tickets).

Getting tougher to compare the translation of box office sales to home video sales for a movie when box office sales saw a huge uptick because of theater-only 3D. The box office sales will be inflated since 3D costs extra.

I doubt that the 3-D factor accounted for an additional $1.7 BILLION dollars, especially when you take into account that The Dark Knight grossed just over $1 billion worldwide.

Avatar likely still doubled up The Dark Knight in individual ticket sales.

It accounted for a good deal.

33% of Box Office Generated by 3D Movies
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/3-d...d-movies-19015


Doubled ticket sales? I doubt it. I am pretty sure it didn't even sell as many tickets as Titantic. Dark Knight didn't sell as many tickets as Titantic either and came close to the Titantic $$ amount.

Clearly something is adding to the inflated $$ totals for these newer record breaking movies in the theater. Dark Knight had more expensive IMAX tickets. Avatar had more expensive 3D (and IMAX) tickets. In addition to more expensive ticket prices over the years since when Titantic was released.

Make sure you start with your own...then do the waiting.


Wasn't The Dark Knight a holiday season release, though?

Brandon

Good point. Even though Avatar is still huge clearly discs in general sell much more during the holidays. Oct/Nov/Dec >>>>> April.

Probably why they will be re-releasing Avatar again around the holidays.

Oh, please. You just derailed the thread with a bunch of talk about theatrical takes from two movies launched at different times and with different home video release methods. You're in no position to tell anyone else to stay on topic.

They had different theatrical and home video releases, but they are about the best comparison available in tracking market trends for blockbusters.

Granted, trying to compare ANYTHING to Avatar's sales performance is difficult....

The point about being on topic was that the mods did request that we refrain from directly talking in detail about movie digital downloads and IVOD in this thread as not to turn it into a DVD/Blu-ray vs downloads format war thread.

I think a rhetorical point about how much larger physical disc sales and packaged media in general is to the scale of downloads is fair enough when its obviously in direct response to someone talking about how physical is doomed because downloads are going to take over soon.

Avatar will also sell additional copies in the fall and during the holiday season. No matter what a movie did box office wise an April release is never going to do as well as a mid December holiday season release. But Avatars going to do both . But when you are comparing performance of sales, obviously April versus December seasonality is a major factor.

Lets assume an average sale price of Avatar for the Blu-ray version was $20 as most units were sold at Walmart and Target and Amazon also had it for $19.99 or $19.96 per unit. The HMM reported revenues for the week ending 4/25/10 for Blu-ray were $66.57 M.

If you take an average $20 x 2.7 million units which comes out to a round $54 million dollars which given the HMM estimate for the week, would leave around $12.7 million dollars for routine residual base line sales of catalog and older release Blu-ray titles.

$12.57 M for a baseline of core routine Blu-ray sales is perfectly consistent with the two previous weeks as well which had Blu-ray revenues at $18.57 M and $15.77 M even without a major new release as well.

Thats a current average YTD this year of Blu-ray through 17 weeks of $27.43 M which is substantially better almost double than the $15.15 M YTD in 2009 or four times higher than the $6.80M in the same period in 2008.

Just look at the chart below for 2010 Blu-ray revenues. If you look its obvious the floor for 2010 is higher than the floor for 2009 which is higher than the floor for 2008.

You also can clearly see that the weeks of 4/18/10 and 4/11/10 which had virtually no new releases (under 9 million new release box office revenues) can be seen as a base floor for Blu-ray sales. Anything above that $10-13- 15M baseline is clearly the effect of that weeks new releases above routine sales.

Pretty darn clear that the routine base of sales has increased substantially each year as a result of many factors including the increased amount of hardware owners that occur in the 4Q holiday season of each year that resets the next year at a higher baseline of routine sales.

Where has the assertion been made that physical media is doomed because downloads are going to take over soon?

Here's a set of calculations to see how the other titles did in the wake of Avatar in terms of other Blu-ray unit sales.

In the Blu-ray version of Avatar did 2.7 million units then Avatar would have a 100.00 index number on a Top 20 Blu-ray Sellers chart.

Its obviously a massively dominant week for Avatar for Blu-ray and DVD sales, but still just by looking at the Top 20 Seller index numbers and the Blu-ray share we can derive the following Blu-ray Index numbers.

Adding them up we can see that the remaining 17 titles (not the #1 title, not the 2 DVD only) did an additional 10.49 % above what Avatar did on Blu-ray.

SO if we know that Avatar did 2,700,000 units then each of the 100.00 index points represent 27,000 units or 1.00 Index = 27,000 sold in this weeks relative value against the #1 best seller.

So just by knowing the reported values of just Blu-ray units the titles off the best selling Top 20 Sellers chart (which are not the bestselling top 20 Blu-ray titles either) we know those 17 titles did an additional 27,000 x 10.49 Index = 283,320 units Blu-ray units sold for the week. Thats just those 17 titles. Its logical to assume that the other 2000 or so Blu-ray units did some volume as well. Its illogical that they did nothing.

Its also illogical that the remainder of the titles in release did an even amount of volume.


Actually , if you extended out the calculation you can get an estimate of how those titles on the Top 20 Sellers chart did for Blu-ray sales.

Not however, that these are not even the Top 20 Blu-ray selling titles, as we don't have that sales chart, these are only the coincident titles that appear on the Top 20 Sellers chart for combined DVD+Blu-ray sales.

Or you also can take $12.57 M and divide it by an assumed average price for a Blu-ray sale, lets make it $15. That gives a 12,570,000 / 15 = 838,000 additional non Avatar units sold. Or at $20 average price thats 628,500 additional Blu-ray units sold among the non Avatar sales.

Just from above we can see that at 10 Blu-ray titles did 12,000 units or more and at least a couple did over 40,000 units even with the distraction of Avatar and even with them doing tiny Index numbers.

We might get them from the studio and we might not. There may be a PR value in claiming something of a 7 days sales record, but since this ain't the format war days, active aggressive PR like that is less likely.

We will probably only get the normal reporting week sales for its second week of release as a full 7 day period is crossing over the normal reporting period boundary.

Since the normal Nielsen Videoscan reporting weeks falls Monday through Sunday, its likelier that the studio will just allow the normal industry reporting from Nielsen Videoscan and Rentrak to speak for themselves, especially since Warner pushed back a bit against the Fox bestseller claims.

BTW, the first week sales are actually normally 6 new release sales days in the reporting period anyway as typical new releases have Tuesday availably anyway and a 7 day sales period is not a typical metric anyway.

2008 to 2009 to 2010 Year to Year Revenue Comparison Summary

Updated thru week ending 4/25/10

This data has been updated. Please go to the end pages of this thread for the latest versions.

I'm not what that is supposed to mean?

Well I would contend that 3&4 preclude the possibility of 1&2. While the biggest selling titles are day and date sales. The sheer numbers of catalogue titles still make
for the bulk of sales.


Well they may not but I sure do. After spending thousands of dollars on BD hardware and software and thousands more on the rest of my HT I am starting to think about getting rid of it all. If I have no movies to play that I haven't watched to death there isn't much point in spending the money and tying up the space.

It's like the music companies. I had no legal way to buy downloaded music until a month ago but the record companies still whined and bitched that sales sucked. If this week proved any thing it is that people need titles they want to watch before they will buy players.

Not really been brought up by any of the folks here, but I posted this at HDD in response to some comments that the 49% Blu-ray unit marketshare for Avatar for its release week ending 4/25/10 really should not count or is inflated in some manner because the Blu-ray units for Avatar this week sold were all all Blu-ray+DVD combo packs instead of just a plain Blu-ray version and somehow that should not count in some manner.


======================

Like I said above, I think its just some cognitive dissonance on your behalf, trying to organize the known data with your preconceptions and assumption biases here.

First off, the 49% is apples to apples with the performance of similar genre titles, like 42% for Terminator Salvation and 41% for 2012 and 38% for Star Trek, its not like we are talking a romantic comedy here. Those all performed at those levels with out a DVD in the package and pretty much those numbers have trended higher over time.

Avatar is also a perfect match for the PS3 crowd and there are millions of PS3 owners there that have not been very active in Blu-ray movie buying, so any noticeable improvement in the sales penetration to PS3 owners adds a few percentage points.

We also have the fact that this was a very high profile title, with extreme box office performance, that would tend to concentrate the buying activity of Blu-ray owners who picked this title together for the week instead of spreading out their picks among other titles. Blu-ray owners as first adopters would tend to be higher performing library collectors and would tend to buy more than the general population.

Did the inclusion of the DVD in the package improve the value and increase the sales of the Blu-ray+DVD sku, over a theoretical Blu-ray only version? Sure , but we are not in that alternative universe.

Its obvious that the Blu-ray+DVD package was a success here and provided a good value for consumers at that price point. But thats the point. It made more profit for the studios and retailers and consumers were willing to buy it at that price.

By design, it also addresses consumer concerns about not being able to play the Blu-ray Disc in vehicle, portable devices and in secondary DVD players around the house. So it addresses a consumer issue.

It also on the margins , does meet a value proposition for consumers that also do not have already a Blu-ray player, but are considering one in the future and use these combo packs to acquire a library of Blu-ray Discs in the interim. Thats by design, It makes it more likely them to continue to buy optical discs in the future and continue the profitable packaged media revenue stream for a high definition generation.

I'm not sure what the certified Blu-ray skeptic angst is about the Blu-ray +DVD combo version of Avatar counting as a Blu-ray sale or as the Blu-ray unit marketshare metric is here though. Granted there is some marginal bump for including a DVD in the set, but consumers still consciously paid more for the Blu-ray version here as they had a ready cheaper alternative in the lower priced DVD on sale right next to it. Yet 2.7 million and more consumers consciously choose to spend more to get the Blu-ray Disc version.

It certainly would in any circumstances be valid as an indicator of consumer preference and thats a valid measure for the Blu-ray unit marketshare metric to capture.

Its not like we are talking about the Snow White or Toy Story re release on Blu-ray weeks where the Blu-ray+DVD or DVD+Blu-ray options were all counted as Blu-ray units and no DVD only units were available. Thus the total format revenues for Blu-ray and the top 20 unit marketshare metrics were somewhat inflated because obviously some people that were going to use the DVD first were forced into buying the combo pack as there were not DVD only alternatives available to them at the time of purchase.

Here thats just not the case, as they were no reports of the DVD only version of Avatar selling out.

There is just a clear recognition that 49% percent of the Nielsen Videoscan first alert captured consumer transactions and 40% of the greater universe including Walmart consumer transactions for this title were made by consumers wanting and willing to pay more for the version including the Blu-ray Disc.

Even if you said that the Blu-ray only version would only have gotten the marketshare of Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation or 2012, thats still 38-42% and to be able to sustain that at twice or three or four times the volume is obviously significant. The fact that the apples to apples comparison metric here for Avatar is at 49% Blu-ray unit marketshare obviously shows growth in the Blu-ray format and will encourage retailers and the studios and consumers into further Blu-ray growth.

Thats progress no matter how you look at it.

Very nice summary Kosty. Enjoyed the read!

I am not quite sure what your issue is. Apparently, you feel that catalog titles are not being shipped fast enough.

I agree with that point (up to a point). I have always said that the studios would enhance Blu-ray adoption by shipping more catalog titles, especially of genres that appeal to non-video-game customers.

However:
1. Blu-ray adoption is being most driven by new titles that spur a lot of consumer interest. Catalog is secondary to most people at this point.
2. There are a substantial number of important catalog titles now available on Blu-ray. Look back a few weeks to the lists of famous titles (by sales, by AFI rank) and see that the glass is half full as well as being half empty.

I am mostly interested in classic films. Yes, I would like to see LoA, Ben-hur, Kwai, etc. on Blu-ray. I do feel that many of these titles have been delayed unnecessarily and foolishly but I also know that they are coming. And in the meantime there are a lot of other catalog titles that are worthy coming out (Zhivago, Metropolis, Hamlet, Fantasia to name a few.)

I actually have a pile of classic Blu-rays that I haven't had time to watch!

Pretty sure Bridge on the River Kwai will be announced soon and thats going to make my day when it does.

EDIT: HMM updated the Blu-ray Top 20 Chart


Even more non Avatar units accounted for just in the Blu-ray Top 20 Sellers




updated

^^^ Only two titles got a 1.XX comparison below "Avatar's" 100 benchmark, everything else is below 0.99 or lower.
"Avatar" may have sold a lot of BD's but the rest of the library (from the Top 20 all the way down) barely moved units.

That is what I have heard as well. Bridge on the River Kwai is a really fine film, holds up incredibly well. Few if any special effects.

Lawrence will, however, be later. I understand they are doing an 8K scan.