Analyst: PS3 a Crutch to the Blu-ray Market

April 24th, 2008, 00:28 Posted By: wraggster

Just as some game makers might worry that people are buying PS3s just for Blu-ray movies, movie studios may need to worry that that people are buying the consoles just for games, according to one analyst.
“The studios better hope that people are playing movies on their PlayStations," said ABI Research analyst Steve Wilson. "Otherwise there’s very little installed base."

The comments come from an abstract of ABI Research's new study, “Consumer Video Technologies Forecasts," which found that "the state of the Blu-ray player market is not all that encouraging," because of the market's reliance on the Blu-ray-enabled PS3.

"In 2008 about 85 percent of the Blu-ray players in the market will be found in PS3s; the dedicated consumer electronics and PC-based types of Blu-ray players won’t catch up in terms of market share until about 2013," Wilson added.

He also said that about 35 percent of DVD players sold today include upconversion capabilities, which improve the look of standard DVD videos. ABI expects that figure to reach about 60 percent by 2013.

With people already having large libraries of DVDs, and with DVD player technology improving, consumers have less of a reason to upgrade to high-definition video, even if Blu-ray won the war against HD-DVD.

“The studios had hoped to have settled the war,” Wilson added. "But I think they’re going to be disappointed when they don’t see the volumes of players going up they way they would have liked.”

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