Walmart to Only Carry BluRay
Well, it’s about as obvious as a Hare Krishna at a Metallica conert that HD DVD is dead. Long live Blu Ray.
To further demonstrate what we here at PS3Vault already know, Stephen Pope, Chief Global Market Strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald Europe recently talked to CNN about the outlook for the High Definition DVD war.
Pope started out by revealing that Walmart will soon only carry Blu-ray players in their stores, “Walmart said physically in our stores, we’re only going to sell Blu-ray players. You can get the high definition player [HD DVD] if you shop online with Walmart, but if it’s in the store, just Blu-ray.”
Later he was asked if it was just because of the recent Blu-ray success, and if it really meant that it is the better system? Pope responded with, “I think it probably is this time around, in Sony’s favor. The sales have come through with the PS3 which has a Blu-ray player and that has really taken off because they’ve made a smaller capacity model which is more price affordable”
When asked about how this would affect Sony financially – “I think you’ll start to see now that the money will begin to roll in towards Sony because people have now seen that there is a definitive decision….the balance has heavily tipped towards Sony favor.”
He was then asked what would Toshiba do now, “I think what you’ll eventually see is that Toshiba will have to realize that as good as the technology is, it is, is not going to be the winner this time around, and they’re going to have to shelve it and eat humble pie and probably under franchise manufacture their own version of blu-ray players.”
Stephen Pope also said that the Blu-ray market will eventually become a 20 billion dollar market, almost triple the value of DVD.
From CNN.com
Filed under: Blu Ray News
I’m kinda mad at Wal-Mart for presuming to decide for me which medium I will watch/buy. In fact, for this and many other reasons, I don’t (and won’t) buy my movies or CD’s from Wal-Mart. So, all in all I guess their decision really doesn’t have any effect on me. It still kinda p*sses me off though (yes I own a HD-DVD player…I admit it).
I have both a Blu-Ray player and an HD player and I prefer the HD DVD format. Blu-Ray is obviously selling more titles because there are more titles available on Blu-Ray than HD DVD, but that doesnt mean it is the better format. I have more quality releases from HD dvd thab Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray seems to be more interested in getting the titles out to the public than worrying about the quality of the releases.I think Walmart is trying to make a decission for their customers that we need to have the freedom to make ourselves.I will buy my releases from a company that lets the consumer make their own decissions.