Free 300 HD DVD With Purchase of Xbox 360 HD DVD Player at Best Buy

[Jeremy Charette]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=category&id=pcmcat128600050027' target='_blank'>http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=category&id=pcmcat128600050027</a><br /><br /></div>"Add more flexibility to your gaming system with the Xbox 360 HD DVD player — now at a lower price! This easy-to-use accessory plugs into your Xbox 360 and delivers the stunning power of high-definition to your home theater system. To get your HD DVD library started, you'll receive<br />King Kong free in the box with the player. Plus, for a limited time, you can get 300 on HD DVD free when you order the player."<br /><br /> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/f_070819_300hddvd_2.jpg" /> <br /><br />Another great deal on the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive. Kick in the copy of King Kong in the box, and the five free HD DVDs by mail, and that's a total of 7 movies, the remote, and the drive for $180 (plus tax). Heck, you'd be hard pressed to buy the 7 movies <i>alone </i>for less than $180. Kind of a no brainer at this point, huh?

[Jeff_R]

Yikes. My post about the fire sale in the other thread is even more relevant now! :D

Still, at that price, it'd be almost tempting to pick up, even if it is probably going to end up as an orphaned format. If they had more of the Universal-exclusive titles that I want as options for the five free, I might, but eh, I'll wait. I've got them all on SD anyway, and their time on Blu-ray will likely come at some point.

[EscapePod]

Yikes is right..... now I finally have to go out and buy the Xbox 360, so I can use the drive and movies. 8O

[Felix Torres]

Well, now.
Some would say fire sale is a bit of a...stretch...
(Not that the BD camp has any problems with stretching...)
Considering that in the last year standalone HD-DVD players have dropped 50% (a minimum of US$300) the 360 drive simply *had* to drop some and most folks expected more than a $20 drop. (Surely the bare drives have dropped a bit more than that...)

Add-in that the day the price first dropped to $179 BB had the drives at $149 online (for the hour or less it took them to sellout their stock) and in stores all day.

Add-in that third-tier online vendors, that never sold the drive for much less than list, are running the drives at $160 and lower and its pretty clear that the *wholesale* price dropped *more* than just $20. That is not fire sale behavior.

Fire sales reduce the list price more than the wholesale price, not vice-versa. Reducing the wholesale price more than the list price is what you do to sweeten the pot for retailers. To get them to promote your product above your competitors'. That suggests a long term commitment, not short term desperation.

Now, about the other post about the 2:1 BD to HD ratios, you wouldn't happen to have a source listing *absolute* numbers rather than ratios? Not looking for an argument or anything, its just that the BD crowd as been know to be very "liberal" in their use of ratios and statistics (to the extent that they claimed BD owner 90% of HD video disk sales in australia, which drew a second look and reveleaded that, ahem, it was 90% of 5000 total units sold in march and included freebies bundled with PS3s).

It makes a difference to outsell your opposition vs *outshipping* them. And it makes a difference whether the total market is millions or thousands. Just like it makes a difference if your customers are buying or renting disks.

I don't particularly care which camp wins this "war" but I get the impression the BD camp is the desperate one here; they're the ones who bet *two* whole farms on one product, who shipped product before the specs were ready, who have issued three revisions to the *hardware* spec in a year and now face the prospect of incompatibility between revisions beyond what firmware can patch over. They're the ones trying to stampede customers towards their product before the market for said product even materializes.

Throw in those highly publicized deals closing shelves to competing products and its easy to see why the (admittedly paranoid) EU competition bureaucrats are investigating BD dealmaking.

Me, I wonder what would happen if HD-DVD indeed dies and a year later it turns out the death wasn't quite legit. A bit late to apply remedies, no?

That's why I'm staying on the sidelines of this "war".
BD may or not have the upper hand but I'm not going to help them pull off a shady win either.

[Felix Torres]

Yikes is right..... now I finally have to go out and buy the Xbox 360, so I can use the drive and movies. 8O

:lol:

Surely there is another reason or 200 to get a 360 than just a free copy of 300... :wink:
(I'd recommend Oblivion, BioShock, Mass Effect, Gears of war, Halo, Catan and Carcassonne, for starters.) :twisted:

[Jeff_R]

I was using "fire sale" in a non-technical sense; more that you'd start seeing some very compelling bundle prices to move product and get numbers up. I wasn't really referring to the $20 price drop, so much as the 2 free bundled movie+5 free titles with a $180 player. As pointed out, the player becomes essential free at that point to the consumer. Obviously, not a strategy that one can commit to long term. :D

As far as actual numbers go, sure. 300, for example, sold 190,000 on Blu-ray, 97,000 on HD-DVD. Total units to date this year, 1.6 million Blu-ray versus 795,000 HD-DVD. For the latter:

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Industry_Trends/Disc_Sales/Disc_Sales:_Hard_Numbers_in_for_First_Half_of_2007/862

Personally, there are so many rumours on either side, most of which have no accurate sourcing whatsoever, I don't pay much attention. If the EU is anything to go by, we should never purchase a Microsoft product for the rest of our lives! :D One example of these rumours: Microsoft is allegedly pumping enormous dollars into this "war", largely to damage Sony as a competitor on the console/media extender side; very shady if true, but I'm not going to believe that either until I see proof, and it didn't stop me from purchasing my copy of Vista. :D For me, it boils down to:

What media is the most likely to capture the market, and give me benefits as a consumer with a non-orphaned format?
What media is the one I would rather my films were distributed on to reach the largest Hi-Def market?

That's essential it as far as I'm concerned. The problem with most of the websites disseminating information on either side is that they are in many cases, at heart, tech enthusiasts and hence early adopters. So many of them have picked a camp personally and are evangelizing it. The more reputable ones have picked their camps based on market information; they can be spotted because they quote sales numbers. Others are zealots and don't pay any attention to factual information, and there are lots of these on both sides. That's why I look at original sales data rather than any op/ed pieces; it just keeps anything much clearer.

[RichL]

It's a tempting deal but I still won't buy one because:

i) I'm waiting for one format to win. I don't care if that's now, 5 years time or never. If/when it happens, I'll buy into that HD format.

ii) I've already lost my Xbox 360 once. I don't want to lose my games machine and video player then next time it breaks.

[Jason Dunn]

Still, at that price, it'd be almost tempting to pick up, even if it is probably going to end up as an orphaned format.

I think that in this era, regardless of who "wins" this format war, the "loser" will be no more orphaned than DVD+R or DVD-R was. As in, I'm pretty confident that the eventual HD players that become standard will play both. I'm not gobbling up HD-DVD movies myself, but I've bought a few and am not worried about not being able to play them five years from now. Dual-format will be a marketing advantage to any player, and eventually it will become so commoditized that even the $99 players will have the ability to play Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

[Jeff_R]

That would definitely be a great result, Jason, and one I'd be appreciative of as a consumer. As a filmmaker, less so, since supporting multiple formats inevitably leads to higher costs, but if that means the film reaches more audiences, then perhaps it will offset.