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Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending August 3rd, 2008
Both DVD and Blu-ray are up on this week's Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of our friends at Home Media Magazine. The interesting thing this week is that Blu-ray managed a 10 percent share against the top 20 DVDs, but the two biggest titles on both formats Blu-ray didn't fair as well. The comedy Harold & Kumar was number one on the DVD charts, but the HD version only managed to steal about 7 percent away from DVD. Meanwhile the latest Stargate, was easily the number one title on Blu-ray -- and was barely surpassed on DVD -- but the HD version still didn't manage 10% of the market. This of course means that a few catalog titles made up the difference for 'ol Blu, and most of that money went to Paramount. In fact four Paramount catalog titles made the Blu-ray top 20, including Top Gun which was at number six and our personal favorite, The Hunt for Red October at nine. No way can either format see another increase next week though, as the slate of titles was anything but impressive. But if you look much further in the future into October and beyond, we really can't wait to see how Blu-ray sells through this holiday season when the true market indicators are exposed.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending July 27th, 2008
Unexpectedly, 21 was able to move the needle upwards this week for both DVD and Blu-ray on the Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of Home Media Magazine. While 21 helped both formats, it helped DVD more, as the Blu-ray edition only managed to take 7.71 percent away from DVD. It still didn't have any problems taking the number one spot on both charts though, but while the DVD version outsold Step Up 2: The Streets by almost four to one, the Blu-ray version couldn't even mange two to one over the much older Batman Begins. This helps explain how Blu-ray managed nine percent this week, as that one title alone managed 26 percent of the title's share. The bigger shocker -- to at least Universal -- has to be how poorly the Mummy franchise did on both formats. Unlike other Summer theater blockbusters that helped propel the previous movies from the franchise up the home media charts, none of the Mummy movies made the DVD top 20 and even their debut on Blu-ray didn't compare to other franchise catalog titles like Batman. Next week should be something to see though, as Blu-ray released 24 new titles that week, including a few titles we expect to hit home with the Blu-ray demographic like Stargate: Continuum and Doomsday.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending July 20th, 2008
Not a big surprise that overall sales are down this week, on the Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of Home Media Magazine, as only one new release made the Blu-ray top ten. If we've learned anything from covering this each week, it is that a hot title makes all the difference in the world. So when Step Up 2: The Streets is the highest ranked new release, it isn't going to be a good week. This is especially true with a title like this, which doesn't really fit what we'd call the typical Blu-ray demographic -- in fact, while most Blu-ray new releases get about 10 percent of the total title share, Step Up only got 2.7 percent. Next week is sure to be better though, as the Mummy franchise should help move the needle, but even if it doesn't, 21 should be able to pick up where it left off. Interestingly, only 4 of the top 20 DVDs were not also available on Blu-ray this week, which is an all time low, while at the same week the overall Blu-ray share is down to 8 percent from 12. So we'll be keeping an eye on this in the coming weeks, and see if it can help Blu break off a 15 percent share.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending July 13th, 2008
Wow, are we bad at making predictions of what the Nielsen VideoScan charts -- courtesy of Home Media Magazine -- are going to do. We thought we were going to see another ho-hum week like the last few, and then Batman went and made us fall out of our chair by single handily giving Blu-ray the best week it's ever had in the four months we've been tracking the market share. Another first this week is something that Hollywood expects to see more often -- but is too early to call a trend -- is the fact that while DVD sales are down for the week, Blu-ray is up. Now we realize right up front that a big part of the reason for this is because Batman Begins has been out on DVD for, forever, and was just released for Blu-ray this week. But you can take a look at Batman: Gotham Knight and see that head to head, the new release netted the same result as the overall share at 12 percent. This can only be a good sign for Blu-ray in regards to the future of packaged media, but again we'll remind everyone that 7 of the top 20 titles on DVD are not available on Blu-ray. Looking forward, most of the new releases should be available on Blu in the coming months, so we'd be very surprised if Blu-ray couldn't keep up this pace going into the holiday season where it really looks like it'll have the opportunity to take off.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending July 7th, 2008
Both packaged media formats are down a bit this week according to the Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of Home Media Magazine, but we're not sure how Blu-ray managed to hang on to 7% of the market this week. The reason we are surprised, is because for the first time in a long time, almost half of the movies on the DVD top 20 chart aren't available on Blu-ray. This is thanks to just about every studio, as the chart is just full of everything from re-released animated Disney movies to TV shows from every network. The lack of TV shows being released on Blu-ray really has us scratching our head, the only thing we can think of is that the high prices are keeping the sales of the few Blu-ray TV shows down. Probably a more telling stat this week is the fact that the top two titles on both charts managed to garner a 10% share on Blu. So it seems the movie lovers eager enough to go Blu, are the same ones who buy hot titles the first week they are out. Then, after the titles has been on the shelves for a while longer, the less enthusiastic DVD fans show up at the store to pick it up. Again we expect much of the same next week, as the titles really don't start to roll out for a few more weeks and one trend we are most definitely starting to see, is that on weeks with hot new releases, Blu-ray manages a much better share -- we can't see how that is bad news for any HD movie fan.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending June 29th, 2008
As expected, the Nielsen VideoScan charts are delayed this week because our friends over at Home Media Magazine were enjoying the holiday. Although we understand wanting to take it easy on the 4th of July, we do really wish HMM would've included the top twenty Blu-ray chart this week, as this makes two weeks in a row we've been without. The other chart that is missing again this week is the top twenty market share, so there's no way to know how well the number one and two DVDs did on Blu-ray. Although both DVD and Blu-ray experienced modest gains this week over last's, the share stayed pretty much the same (up 1%). Although this might not seem like much, it 's better than you think when you consider that three out of five of the top twenty DVDs weren't available on Blu-ray thanks to Universal and Fox. Universal will be on board soon enough, and we're not sure what the deal is with Fox, 'cause we don't know if the animated feature Futurama: The Beast with the a Billion Backs is even available in HD. Next week looks to be worst than this one though, as the releases aren't that exciting, but who knows we've been wrong before.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending June 22nd, 2008
This week's Nielsen VideoScan numbers are pretty late. This was mostly because last week's Home Media Magazine was delayed because of the Home Media Expo, which completly threw us off. The other thing that threw us off this week was the fact that this week's edtition of HMM didn't inlcude a top 20 Blu-ray title chart. This really only leaves us the market share to discuss which is understandably down. The fact that both DVD and Blu-ray sales were down that week is no surprise since there just weren't that many new releases and the ones that were released weren't anything to call home about. We expect next this week's numbers to be delayed as well because of the 4th of July. When the charts do finally come out there should be more to talk about though, as we will be interested to see how well 10,000 BC does against DVD, as well as The Spiderwick Chronicles. Luckily the month of June is behind us and July looks to be a fun ride, so we can't wait to see if Blu-ray manages to pick up any speed before the holiday season in the coming months.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending June 15th, 2008
There are mixed results for Blu on this week's Nielsen VideoScan charts, courtesy of Home Media Magazine, because while revenues are up 27% over last week, when compared to DVD, Blu lost two percent. The big difference this week is The Bucket List which was easily number one on the DVD charts, but the Blu version didn't even managed one third the sales as the number one title, Jumper. The other explanation for the drop in share is while last week there were only five DVDs on the top twenty that didn't make it to Blu, this week there is seven thanks to HBO and Sony not bringing a couple new TV shows to Blu. Getting back to Jumper, it killed the rest of the Blu releases this week, forcing everyone else way down -- but somehow we doubt it'll have any legs. Next week both DVD and Blu-ray should be way down thanks to the weakest releases in some time, and we expect to see Blu-ray back to five or six percent.
Study: in-game advertiser says 82% of you don't mind in-game ads
The life of a Joystiq editor is frought with difficult – and often perilous – decisions. Take this example: do we choose to run a story about in-game advertising statistics (we imagine a large majority of you are already rolling your eyes, scrolling down to see if there's something a little stronger waiting for you below) or do we simply run a post about another tattoo of [insert popular video game character here]? In this case, we've chosen to share the statistics with you, and we want you to know why. In-game advertiser IGA Worldwide contracted the survey-mavens at Nielsen to conduct the "Consumers' Experience with In-Game Content & Brand Impact of In-Game Advertising Study." The results of said study may shock you, but here goes: according to IGA's study, a whopping 82% of gamers "felt games were just as enjoyable with ads as without" and a no less impressive 61% "increase consumers' favorable opinions of products advertised in-game post-play." What's this all mean? Why, that in-game advertising works, despite some marketers fears to the contrary.Regardless of the wall of statistics contained in the press release (really, go check it out), we all know the key to successful in-game advertising comes from using a gentle-touch. MLG ads littered throughout the $60 Rainbow Six Vegas 2? No thanks, really. Some pre-roll ads before your free game of Quake Live, brought to you by none other than IGA? That we can live with.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending June 8th, 2008
Again on this week's Nielsen VideoScan chart courtesy of Home Media Magazine, we get exposed for our inability to make accurate predictions as we stated last week that we expected half of the DVD top 20 to not be available on Blu-ray. With some help from Paramount for the first time ever only five DVD exclusives made the top 20. The interesting thing is that four of those are Paramount titles, with the last being from Sony. This really has us scratching our head as Sony is the last studio we'd expect to still be releasing DVD exclusives. Either way, Blu-ray managed to not drop as much as DVD this week as Semi-Pro toped both charts. But last week's winner wasn't far behind as many Blu-ray owners are not hesitating to pick up Rambo -- we can't say we blame them. Paramount's long awaited titles didn't to too bad either, taking the number four and five spots on the chart and accounting for almost 50 percent of the title's overall sales. Next week we expect both DVD and Blu-ray to be up as Jumper is sure to move the needle, and we'll be waiting to see if it can muster more than 12 percent of the share away from DVD like Rambo did its first week out.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending June 1st, 2008
Boy did we not see this one coming, as not only did Blu-ray make us look like an idiot when we predicted last week that "there is no way Blu-ray can sustain these numbers with only Rambo," but Blu set a personal best at 10 percent of the market on this week's Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of Home Media Magazine. Rambo really lead the way for Blu taking 12 percent of the titles sales from DVD, this is twice the share that the Blu version of National Treasure: Book of Secrets was able to muster last week. At the same time Rambo outsold Book of Secrets easily on Blu, while Rambo wasn't able to take the number one spot on the DVD charts. Next week is a big week for Blu-ray as there was a record number of releases, including many catalog titles that we expect to sell well, in addition there are a few new-er releases, that should help out. We're not sure if Blu-ray will take more than 10 percent of the market though, as we expect the trend of half of the top 20 DVDs to continue to not be available on Blu-ray for the foreseeable future.
Nielsen: Wii usage is second to Xbox 360
A study by Nielsen Games found that the Wii's usage comes in second compared to other consoles the Xbox 360. Among 10-26 year olds, the Xbox 360 reigned supreme, while for those above 27, the PS3 Xbox 360 also held a steady lead. Interestingly, the Wii owned the middle ground in usage for both demographics, with the Xbox 360 and PS3 switching places.The Nielsen study, conducted between April 2007 and February 2008, lumps all that data into one pool, so it's not hard to see where some issues might lie. It would certainly be interesting to see monthly breakdowns and observe if the Wii and PS3 received noticeable usage increases once high-profile games started showing up during Holiday '07. We also wonder what effect usage of console Blu-ray or DVD functionality had on the data. But what we're actually most curious about, is where the PS2 would be had it been incorporated into the data?Update: Nielsen amended its 27+ data, apparently the Xbox 360 and PS3 info was accidentally reversed for the demographic; fixed image to match.Source: How much use does Wii get?Source: Correction[Via GameDaily, Thanks Master X]
Nielsen: PS3 unpopular with kids, and adults [Update]
Update: Nielsen Games corrected their figures. The usage for PS3/360 was switched for the "above 26" crowd.Nielsen Games recently conducted a study to see how two different age groups used their home consoles. Surveyed people were split into two groups: those 10-26 years old and those above 26. The younger group (10-26) resonated most with Microsoft's Xbox 360, with the console being played 63% of the time. PS3, in comparison, was only played 12%.The older crowd, those above the age of 26, was Sony's strongest demographic. Instead of being the least used console, it becomes the most. PS3 is used 52% of the time, while Xbox 360 is used only 20%. Amongst the older crowd, PS3 is still the least used console, with only 20% of those surveyed using the system. The Xbox 360, in comparison, has 52%.In light of these updated figures, it looks like Sony may have something to worry about. The older crowd may play PS3 more than the younger crowd, but it looks like Sony has a real fight on their hands for the rest of this generation.[Via GameDaily]
Across the land, Wiis are being neglected
Consumer research bods Nielsen recently set out to answer mind-poppingly important questions such as: just how long did an average play session on the Wii last for somebody in North America between the ages of 10 and 26? The results suggest that we should all be paying a little more attention to our poor, neglected Wiis.While Nintendo's platform enjoys a decent share of gamers' overall gaming time, the rest of Nielsen's statistics paint a damning picture. The Wii lags behind the Xbox 360 and PS3 in both the "average number of sessions a day" and "average usage days per month" (disgraceful commitment there from the over-26 demographic) sections.The average Wii session also doesn't last as long as those on its two rivals, though no wonder with all of those required installations and ridiculously protracted cut-scenes, amirite? What's that? We're just being sore losers? Fine. Whatever.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending May 25th, 2008
Oh what a difference a new release makes to the Nielsen VideoScan charts courtesy of Home Media Magazine. The National Treasure series helped excel Blu to a 7% share this week, which is the second highest we've seen since HMM started tracking Blu-ray's share compared to DVD. The Nic Cage movies took all three of the top spots on the Blu-ray chart, leaving every other title in the dust by a large margin. But while Book of Secrets may have outsold any other Blu-ray title by almost 4 to 1, it only managed a 6.98% share of the overall title's sales when compared to DVD. Although Blu-ray had a great week this week with a 54.94% increase over last, we still can't help but to harp on the fact that 10 of the top 20 DVD titles aren't available on Blu. The market share per title chart is back this week (after the jump) and it's very obvious that Blu makes up for not having the same new releases by selling catalog titles like V for Vendetta and Twister, with the number one title on both the DVD and the Blu-ray top 20, is the number 20th in regards to Blu-ray market share. As for next week, there is no way Blu-ray can sustain these numbers with only Rambo, but the week after should be really interesting considering how many movies are due to be released on Blu on the same day.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending May 18th, 2008
Two new releases make it to the top of this week's Nielsen VideoScan chart courtesy of Home Media Magazine. But even though Blu-ray sales were up 21.71% this week over last, it wasn't enough to help Blu-ray obtain more than 5 percent of the top 20 sales. This, like the past few weeks, has mostly been because half of the DVD top 20, still aren't available on Blu-ray. The big titles on DVD that are missing this week, are the first three Indiana Jones movies, which are evidently very popular thanks to the fourth movie hitting theaters. We can't wait to see how -- or if -- the market share changes with Paramount Blu-ray titles coming out in the coming weeks, and finally Universal in July. Of course that still leaves Weinstein exclusively releasing on DVD, but this only accounts for one of the top 20 DVDs this week. For whatever reason HMM didn't have its new market share per title chart in this week's edition, but we sure to hope it's there next week when the biggest day and date title for Blu-ray in some time hits the streets in the way of National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
Are Club Penguin's days of growth numbered?
An interesting report on social media by the Nielsen group recently found that Club Penguin, the kid-friendly browser-based MMO acquired by Disney last year for a robust $350 million, may be plateauing or even declining in growth in the face of newer, more competitive social media experiences. While the Nielsen methodology is never made expressly clear (and no direct competitors managed to crack the Top 10), the report does indicate that using the same methodology, they found a 250% growth rate year-over-year just last August.MMO vet Raph Koster is less than surprised by this development, attributing the slight decline in unique visitors more to the increased competition in that space, rather than any specific detriment in Club Penguin itself. Raph speculates that we'll continue to see the market fragment as more kiddie MMOs enter the market. And, judging my store shelves these days, they're coming in droves. While he seems to be of the opinion that the days of these niche MMOs competing in the same arena as MySpace and Facebook are over, that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of money to be made and kids to be entertained.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending May 11th, 2008
DVD gains lost ground this week, but Blu-ray continues downward thanks to another weak list of releases on this week's Nielsen VideoScan chart courtesy of Home Media Magazine; but the 7.3 percent reduction isn't enough to make Blu-ray lose its 5% of the top 20 market. Speaking of the top 20, there are 9 DVDs on the top 20 that didn't make their way to Blu, and HMM added a new chart to help us compare individual title sales. The new chart shows Blu-ray's share per title and the top one on the list is a Blu-ray exclusive (Over America), and interestingly the rest of the list is filled with catalogue titles, with the highest new release, I Am Legend, at 16.8 percent. This chart will become more interesting in a few weeks when Blu-ray finally gets a hot new release after almost a month of drought. Speaking of looking forward, next week is much of the same, as it was an unofficial catalogue week for Blu. So no doubt things are going to get worse before they get better. Either way, we can't wait to see how the new chart breaks down Blu-ray's share on a hot new release like National Treasure.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending May 4th, 2008
We said that Home Media Magazine gave up on HD DVD last week, but really there was still one chart left on the Nielsen VideoScan chart. This week even that one is gone and replaced with another consumer index on consumer spending, but this time for DVD. This makes it evident that while Blu-ray sales were down by 23% last week, DVD was only down by 5%. This helps explain why Blu-ray only managed a 5% share as compared to 6% week before. Again, this week 8 out of the top 20 DVD titles are not also available on Blu-ray, including two from long time Blu studios; Fox and Disney. The other big difference that is every evident this week is the movie demographic of each. While DVD fans ran to 27 Dresses and pushed it to number one, the opposite is true on Blu where The Golden Compass outsold the chick flick by almost 3:1. I Am Legend continues to have long legs and still separates itself from the rest of the list even after seven weeks. Looking forward to next week, it doesn't look like Blu will do very well with the biggest titles not being very appealing to Blu's apparent demographic, but things should change once all the studios are on board in the next month or so.
Nielsen VideoScan High-Def market share for week ending April 27th, 2008
Home Media Magazine finally gave up on HD DVD this week once and for all -- well almost -- as the four top ten Nielsen VideoScan HD charts have been reduced to a single top 20 Blu-ray chart, and the since inception was replaced with a consumer spending on Blu-ray index. We have to say we appreciate these changes as the new information is much more interesting. This week is much of the same from last week, as the top title for DVD wasn't available on Blu-ray and although we were right in our prediction that this week wouldn't be very special, we were wrong about The Orphanage, which despite its subtitles, it was the only title released that week that hit the top ten, and only the second to make the top twenty. Speaking of top twenty, Blu-ray only managed a 6% share against DVD, but only half of the DVD top twenty is available on Blu-ray. Of course this should change by the end of July, now that both Paramount and Universal have announced Blu-ray titles. But until then, next week should be a little better for Blu with some help from The Golden Compass and 27 Dresses, but not much.
