Alan Smithee

I would've bought the 3D Iron Man 3 if the price were lower, but I'll just wait for it to drop. Target doesn't even seem to be carrying it.

Mr. Cinema

Many Walmarts are selling the 3D Iron Man for $24.96. I'd check there.

Mr. Cinema

Are you talking about Iron Man 3? The 2D version is ringing up $19.96 at Walmart. YMMV, but there are plenty of reports of this being a common price. They had released a small ad in the Parade magazine last week with the lower prices. My store changed them yesterday afternoon.

JimRochester

You are correct. Wal Mart was ringing up for $19.96 for the BR + DVD + DC so I grabbed one when I went in to grab something for lunch today. The 3D was $24.96

bruceames

IM3 week will not be the next reported week, but the one after. Since IM3 will be going up against Avengers (released the same week last year), the YoY metric for that week is not going to be pretty. Blu-ray did $88 million on Avengers week. IM3 also suffers from a promotional disadvantage. No store exclusives and, with the exception of Walmart, is being priced very meh everywhere (and even Walmart's price I think is just ringing up low and not really being widely advertised)

This is true, as Blu-ray really only has a big when a movie like that gets released. DVD has a bigger week as well, but it's selling base is so wide that strong new releases don't affect the weekly metrics so much. Also, Blu-ray has much bigger market shares on these kinds of movies so it "steals" sales from DVD, so to speak.

Star Trek was available on Blu-ray everywhere for less than $20, so even the boycotters caved, lol.

bruceames

Same here. I can wait for the price drop. Why should I pay $25 for this when I paid $20 for the 3D version of Avengers last year? And the nearest Walmart from me is 20 miles.

Hopefully Amazon will get around to matching Walmart's price, but they may decide to not bother since Walmart's price isn't widely advertised anyway and limited to in-store purchases.

big e

The thing with me is, I just don't rewatch movies that often. Out of all the movies I own, I've only watched maybe a few dozen more than once. Someone else in this thread had mentioned they would rather spend two hours watching something they had never seen before then something they'd seen three or four times. That’s the way I feel. Right now I have a stack of movies to watch (not that many, maybe four) but they’re all movies I’ve seen previously and I just don’t really have the desire to sit down and throw one of them in. I’ll get around to watching them at some point, just not right now. I get a lot of my movies from Netflix and 9 times out of 10 if I want to watch something, it’s usually what came from Netflix and almost never anything from my own collection. Unless it’s around Halloween, then I’ll start pulling out the horror movies.

A lot of the movies I watch, I just don't feel the need or desire to see them a second time. I've been with Netflix since mid 2009 (I think I joined in August), and out of all the movies I’ve rented from them, there’s only a very small handful that I’ve actually gone out and bought. I just don’t have that desired to rewatch a movie once I’ve seen it. Now, there are movies I own that I consider favorites and I do watch these multiple times, but for the most part I’m completely satisfied with that initial viewing.

davidh777

I don't think the intention was to hurt disc sales but to convert renters into buyers (or "licensors"--whatever you want to call it).

I just didn't enjoy IM3 as much as The Avengers. I hear the ads for IM3 at $20ish and see the promo pics of RDJ sitting on the couch next to the suit and realize I have no desire to spend that much to revisit that movie. I bought The Avengers day 1, but held out on IM2 till it hit $3.99 a year or two later.

I kept getting tempted by STID in the $18 range, but had such mixed feelings about the movie, and I never did end up getting the first movie (which I really enjoyed) in any format. I liked the itunes deal of the two STs in HD for $25 but don't have my home theater set up to play itunes files.

I think the only new releases I buy any more are family, premium TV (HBO/Cinemax), and gifts. Physical media has lost its appeal for me.

hanshotfirst1138

And I'm sure I will too.

I just feel uncomfortable paying for things which I don't actually own. I don't mind buying single songs off of iTunes, but when it comes to full albums, even when I mostly listen to them on my iPod, I prefer to have the corresponding CD, I just don't like stuff floating in "the cloud."

You're probably just indicative of the way things are eventually going to go. I don't deny the huge convenience of streaming, and I think eventually, it's where most people will end up. The future is a-coming, whether I like it or not.

Sub-Zero

September 21:

Sub-Zero

September 28:

Coral

BD accounts for 37%. Iron Man 3 was released that week? (ie. geek factor again).

BD is down 47% from the same time last year, so either last year had a bigger geek factor... or more people are streaming.

bruceames

Last year was Avengers week. Also I think IM3 sales were throttled by the lack of aggressive retailer pricing which is typical on these types of movies. I believe Disney wanted to keep the price high (by selling it at a higher wholesale price to retailers, the days of "loss leader" DVD pricing is long gone) as one of there many "experiments" and obviously it backfired.

E Unit

Is there any data that would show % of households that are streaming? I'd be curious to know if that's really on the increase or if we just say it is when DVD/Blu sales drop.

Iron_Giant

No surprise that Avenger's sold a ton more BR's than IM3, so the drop is hugh but not that surprising.

That "Avenger's BR" sales week had $68 Million just for the Avenger's BR all by itself, that is going to be hard to compete with no matter what BR tittle it is.

PhantomStranger

The Avengers was a lot more popular movie than Iron Man 3, which many view as a disappointment.

Kedrix

Yeah, cause 1 billion dollars in box office sales is a disappointment.

Josh-da-man

Yes, but blu-ray generated $46.5m this week, $35.5m last week, but was down from the week last year.

Comparing sales to the same week last year doesn't provide a very strong yard stick since sales are skewed by major releases. I would suspect that book sales and music sales follow a similar pattern where sales spike when big sellers are released, then drop during slow weeks.

Coral

Right, but you can say the same thing about a week-to-week comparison. The only reason why the sales increased over the previous week was due to IM3 being released. At least with this particular year-over-year comparison, it was more apples-to-apples as the geek factor was high for both weeks.

bruceames

$68 million is about 3.4 million units in sales (assuming $20 per sale).

If we take out $20 million from the $47 million in IM3 week and apply it to "base sales", then IM3 generated about $27 million, or, figuring an average sales price of $23.00, about 1.2 million in sales.

1.2 million units in sales for a comic book movie with a $409 million domestic box office gross is pathetic. It should have been closer to 2 million units. This is the biggest release of the year by far on Blu-ray, so that's why I think the higher than normal retail pricing really hurt sales. It should be rather obvious.

Kedrix

Exactly, the reason why IM3 didn't move more sales was the ridiculous buy in price. I don't even have my copy yet because I would rather wait for something more reasonable. Disney needs to understand that they can't price everything at Vault Diamond Collection type pricing.

bruceames

I compare YoY sales on a particular sales week when there is something interesting. The comparison here is Iron Man 3 vs. Avengers. IM3 can't be expected to match Avengers, so I use box office power to get a sense of how it perhaps "should" have done. IM3 grossed $409 million domestically and Avengers did $683 million. Also, Avengers was a better movie so that has to be factored in. All in all, IM3 definitely underperformed for the reasons I gave above.

bruceames

Right, I think quite a few people have that mentality that anything over $20 is a no-buy. Also, Avengers was below $20 everywhere and people remembered that. They thought it was a rip off to pay more for a lesser movie. And nobody believes that DVD/BD prices are going up, if anything they think they're going down. So you got lots of people (including myself) deciding to wait, or forget about it altogether.

PhantomStranger

Target's blowout pricing of the Avengers 3-D set at $20 was a great loss leader and elevated its sales.

bruceames

I agree. It certainly helped the 3D share as well, getting 23% of OD sales (BD + DVD). Iron Man 3 got only 7% of sales from the 3D SKU