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Bonkers For BOGO
December 3, 2007

It's not enough to just have a format war, guys? Well, swords also seem to be drawing more and more over the impact that 'Buy One, Get One Free' deals have on high-def software sales stats. Some HD DVD fans have been grumbling that the slew of Blu-ray BOGO deals that have been offered around the fourth quarter deflates some of BD's format triumph with software sales thus far. Sources indicate that both formats do count each BOGO sale as two titles sold. However, overall revenues gained would be cut in half from the dollars that would have been earned with the two titles' combined original pricing.
In some examples singled out to me, Fry's was BOGO-ing a selection of about 20 $9.99 priced BD titles in October. Also that month, Circuit City offered BOGO on around 60 BD titles. November has brought down BOGO's BD wrath at F.Y.E., Amazon.com, Fry's, among some others.
This is in contrast to bundling, where the BD and HD DVD camps have said they don't include those free titles with hardware purchase towards their software unit sales counts. Both sides have been highly active with their "Get X Titles for Free with any Player Purchase," offers, but BD does seem to be rocking the BOGO deals alot more than the other side.
But does BD really deserve that HD DVD eye-rolling? If anything, BD is not a hands-down champ with these offers, as they are taking it on the chin some with lost revenue that they would have earned if they weren't marking titles off 50%. There isn't anything stopping HD DVD from jumping in the BOGO fray as well
But short of someone doing a research study indicating if BOGO really does spur consumers to purchase a BD title that they otherwise would have snubbed [hey NPD!] it's tough to say how they are truly influencing unit sales. Overall, the bulk of the high-def sales are in new releases, which usually aren't part of BOGOs, as they are limited mostly to studios' catalog BD.
Probably even more simply affecting software sales is just the straight number of releases: at this point, it appears that BD is ahead by about 40 titles. 
I guess the overall takeaway, though, is that the format war ain't really over, regardless of who says is leading for whatever reason.

Posted by Susanne Ault on December 3, 2007 | Comments (1)