While only limited sales numbers for Blu-ray Disc players for the holiday season are known yet (notably nearly 150,000 players sold in the week starting with Black Friday in late November), Blu-ray titles seem to be making strides in a difficult economic climate. Last week’s release (Dec. 9) of “The Dark Knight” sold an estimated 600,000 Blu-ray copies on Blu-ray in its first day.
Besides setting the latest Blu-ray record for release-day disc sales, that number would represent a healthy 20 percent of all video disc sales of the title on that date (about 3 million), according to Home Media. But that’s just for one title. Warner Bros. said that overall, Blu-ray sales (at least in the early days of the holiday season), represented closer to 25 percent to 30 percent or more of all video disc sales.
Warner Bros.’ DVD content arm, Warner Home Video, had indicated prior to the latest Batman movie’s disc release date that it planned to ship at least 1 million Blu-ray copies to both store and online retailers, given the enormous popularity of the film in its initial theater release.
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