Rich Fiscus
24 Jun 2008 14:24
The Entertainment Merchants Associatioon (EMA) has released its annual report on the US home entertainment sales and rental market. After last year's prediction that high definition discs would dominate the market by 2009 you might expect to see significant growth during 2007. In terms of percentage it was actually fairly impressive at more than 200% sales growth, but in terms of the total market that's not as impressive as it sounds.
According to the report HD discs still accounted for barely over $260 million in sales during 2007. By comparison standard DVD sales amounted to nearly $16 billion. The EMA's current estimate for Blu-ray is sales of $9.5 billion in 2012, when they are predicting it will account for higher sales than DVD.
Total spending for all home video, including both sales and rental of all formats was down slightly from 2006, but the news was much better for the gaming market. In stark contrast to DVD and other home video formats, spending for games saw a serious increase of 34% from 2006.
So what does all this tell us? For starters it seems that lower DVD sales don't mean less entertainment spending so much as a new focus on games. Based on recent sales figures from Best Buy that trend appears to be continuing in 2008.